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WOMAN AND HER WITS 



Woman 

and 

Her Wits 



Epigrams on Woman 
Love, and Beauty 

Collected by 

G. F. MONKSHOOD 

With New Material 
Edited by 

CHARLES 'WELSH 




New YorK Boston 

H.M. CALDWELL CO. 



A 






3 tu* gl 



T M8hSy of CONBRESsI 
j Two Conies Ruceivod ? 

J JUL 12 190? 
! / CoDanght Entry 

\/klA$$j[Cl xXc, No. 

P /? *2 ?cT I 

I copy B. 

fa , . - i r -wr-nr i - i f --mt- ,. k 




Copyright^ 1907 
By H. M. Caldwell Co. 



(UttUrmai ?r* aa 

Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. 
Boston. U.S. A. 



-2-7-t 






FOREWORD BY "A MERE MAN" 

« 

"You ask me how to fathom wit. 
How shall I say, not having it?" 

wrote one of the wittiest of versifiers. Being but 
a "mere man," I can only say in this connection 
that woman, if she be not the wittier of the 
sexes, has certainly been the cause of more wit 
in the other, than anything else, and she there- 
fore above all others ought to be able to fathom 
it. 

So I leave that to her and adduce the following 
pages in support of my statement. In them will 
be found some of the wisest, wittiest, and tender- 
est epigrams, proverbs, axioms, adages, or short 
pithy sentences — call them what you will — re- 
lating to the woman and to women, and to the 
passions, affections, sentiments, and emotions 
which she has ever inspired. 

Wit, wisdom, and woman are here woven in a 
threefold cord, each strand of which shines with 
equal brilliance, and lover and misogynist alike 
may find inspiration, amusement, or consolation, 



FOREWORD 

according as he seeks it, in these gleanings from 
the wide fields of the world's literature. 

On the other hand, woman can see herself re- 
flected in the mirror of the minds of the world's 
great thinkers for her pleasure, edification, or, it 
may be, her scorn and contempt. 

As a mirror is a necessity for every woman, 
no matter what it tells her, and, as inspiration is 
needed by every man especially in his relations 
with the other sex, so this collection of the 
greatest sayings on the greatest subject in the 
world — woman and her wits — must be indis- 
pensable to both. 

But it is needless to enlarge further on these, 
which are, after all, self-evident propositions. 
Let me close as I began by "dropping into 
verse," a la Silas Wegg — verse inspired, or 
rather suggested, by Thackeray's phrase, "It is 
easy to be witty and wicked." 

To be "witty and wicked is easy!" 
'Tis clear from your ready replies, 
But who would be witty and please, he 
Must learn to be witty and wise. 

True wit and true wisdom are brothers; 
If a name for the last you would prize, 



FOREWORD 

You'd better not strive to be witty, 
If you cannot be witty and wise. 

And if for your wit you'd be famous, 
Remember, this adage applies — 
To be witty and wicked is easy 
But it is hard to be witty and wise. 

In the collection garnered here will be found 
a treasury of wit without wickedness and wis- 
dom that is not weariness. 

CHARLES WELSH. 



vu 



WOMAN AND HER 
WITS 



A creature fond and changing, fair and vain, 
The creature woman, rises now to reign. 

Pa melt. 

Second thoughts are best. God created man; 
woman was the after-thought. 

Proverb. 

m 

I have been ready to believe that we have seen 
a new revelation, and the name of its Messiah is 
woman. 

Holmes. 

V§ 

The whisper of a beautiful woman can be 
heard further than the loudest call of duty. 

JSrnonym&am* 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The man who enters his wife's dressing-room 
is either a philosopher or a fool. 

Balzac. 

Be circumspect in your liaisons with women. 
It is better to be seen at the opera with this man 
than to be seen at mass with that woman. 

De Maintenon. 

& 

Two women placed together make cold 
weather. 

Shakespeare. 

I have seen many instances of women running 
to waste and self-neglect, and disappearing 
gradually from the earth, almost as if they had 
been exhaled to heaven. 

Irving. 

Physical love is an ephemeral spark designed 
to kindle in human hearts the flame of a more 
lasting love. It is the outer court of the temple, 

Sabatier. 

Between the mouth and the kiss, there is 
always time for repentance. 

Ricard. 

2 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Love decreases when it ceases to increase. 

Chateaubriand. 



Partake of love as a temperate man partakes 
of wine; do not become intoxicated. 

De Musset, 



A woman never commands a man, unless he 
be a fool, but by her obedience. 

Turkish Spy. 



Many benefit by the caresses they have not 
inspired; many a vulgar reality serves as a 
pedestal to an ideal idol. 

Gautier. 



In the highest society, as well as in the lowest, 
woman is merely an instrument of pleasure. 

Tolstoi, 



Women know at first sight the character of 
those with whom they converse. There is much 
to give them a religious height to which men do 
not attain. 

Emerson, 
3 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Women see through and through each other; 
and often we most admire her whom they most 
scorn. 

Buxton, 

Woman is a miracle of divine contradictions. 

Michelet. 

Before going to war say a prayer; before go- 
ing to sea say two prayers; before marrying 
say three prayers. 

Proverb. 

If marriages are made in heaven you had but 
few friends there. 

Scotch Proverb. 

A man should choose for a wife only such a 
woman as he would choose for a friend, were 
she a man. 

Joubert. 

I think Nature and an angry God produced 
thee to the world, thou wicked sex, to be a 
plague to man. 

Jiriosto. 

4 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Women enjoy more the pleasure they give - 
than the pleasure they feel. 

Rochepedre. 



Woman's tongue is her sword, which she never 
lets rust. 

Mme. Necker. 

Wife and children are a kind of discipline of / 
humanity. 

Bacon. 

Feminine charity renews every day the miracle 
of Christ feeding a multitude with a few loaves 
and fishes. 

LegouvS. 

On seeing a lady sitting at the dinner-table 
between two bishops, Sydney Smith inquired, 
"Her name is Susanna, I assume?" 



With cleverness, thirty years, and a little 
beauty, a woman makes fewer conquests but 
more durable ones. 

Dupuy. 

5 



V 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Women who marry seldom act but once; their 
lot is, ere they wed, obedience unto a father, 
thenceforth to a husband. 

Marston. 

% 

It is woman's way. They always love colour 
better than form, rhetoric better than logic, 
priestcraft better than philosophy, and flourishes 
better than figures. 

Jtnonymous. 
% 

A prude exhibits her virtue in word and man- 
ner; a virtuous woman shows hers in her con- 
duct. 

La Bruyere. 

Tears are the strength of women. 

SainUEvremond. 

A woman's best qualities do not reside in her 
intellect, but in her affections. She gives refresh- 
ment by her sympathies rather than by her 
knowledge. 

Smiles. 

k 

A woman's thoughts run before her actions. 

Shakespeare. 

6 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

It is valueless to a woman to be young unless 
pretty, or to be pretty unless young. 

La Rochefoucauld, 



Silence and modesty are the best ornaments 
of women. 

Euripides, 

The plainest man who pays attention to women 
will sometimes succeed as well as the handsomest 
who does not. 

Cotton, 

As vivacity is the gift of women, gravity is 
that of men. 

Jiddison. 

% 

. Women are passive agents, and when love 
prompts them they can outsuffer martyrs. 

Massinger. 

% 

-, Between two beings susceptible to love, the 
duration of love depends upon the first resistance 
of the woman, or the obstacles that society puts 
in their way. 

Balzac, 

7 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A woman (of the right kind) reading after a 
man, follows him as Ruth followed the reapers 
of Boaz, and her gleanings are often the finest of 
the wheat. 

Holmes. 

To a woman of spirit, the most intolerable of 
all grievances is a restraint on the liberty of the 
tongue. 

Junius. 



If women were humbler men would be hon- 
ester. 

Vanbrugh* 

These women are shrewd tempters with their 
tongues. 

Shakespeare. 

m 

Nature makes fools; women make coxcombs. 

Jlnonymous. 



A woman can be held by no stronger tie than 
the knowledge that she is loved. 

Mme. de Motteville. 
8 



J 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

No friendship is so cordial or so delicious as 
that of girl for girl; no hatred so intense or im- 
movable as that of woman for woman. 

Landor. 

m 

Women are priestesses of the unknown. 

Jinonymous. 

$£ 

To give you nothing and to make you expect 
everything, to dawdle on the threshold of love 
while the doors are closed, this is all the science 
of a coquette. 

De Bernard, 

Men always say more evil of a woman than 
there really is; and there is always more than is 
known. 

M ezeray, 

Neither walls, nor goods, nor anything is more 
difficult to be guarded than woman. 

Jilexis. 



Would you hurt a woman most, aim at her 
affections. 

Wallace. 
9 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A wise man ought often to admonish his wife, 
to reprove her seldom, but never to lay hands on 
her. 

Marcus Jiurelius. 

A woman of honour should never suspect an- 
other of things she would not do herself. 

Marguerite de Valois. 

We only demand that a woman should be 
womanly; which is not being exclusive. 

Leigh Hunt. 

Man forsakes Christianity in his labours; 
woman cherishes it in her solitudes and trials. 
Man lives by repelling, woman by enduring — 
and here Christianity meets her. 

Channing. 

It is not easy to be a widow; one must resume 
all the modesty of girlhood, without being al- 
lowed even to feign ignorance. 

Mme. de Girardin. 

A woman's hopes are woven as sunbeams; a 
shadow annihilates them. 

George Eliot, 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Women cannot see so far as men can, but what 
they do see they see quicker. 

Buckle. 



The more idle a woman's hand, the more 
occupied her heart. 

Dub ay. 

Women speak easily of platonic love; but while 
they appear to esteem it highly, there is not a 
single ribbon of their toilet that does not drive 
platonism from our hearts. 

Ricard. 

If woman did turn man out of Paradise, she 
has done her best ever since to make it up to 
him. 

Sheldon, 

A man cannot possess anything that is better 
than a good woman, nor anything that is worse 
than a bad one. 

Simonides, 

m 

Let woman stand upon her female character 
as upon a foundation. 

Lamb. 
II 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband; 
but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in 
his bones. 

Solomon. 

k 

How wisely it is constituted that tender and 
gentle women shall be our earliest guides — in- 
stilling their own spirits. 

Charming. 

The modest virgin, the prudent wife, and the 
careful matron are much more serviceable in life 
than petticoated philosophers, blustering char- 
acters, or virago queens. 

Goldsmith. 

If men knew all that women think, they would 
be twenty times more audacious. 

Karr. 

Women especially are to be talked to as below 
men and above children. 

Chesterfield. 

When joyous, a woman's license is not to be 
endured; when in terror, she is a plague. 

JEschylus. 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A heart which has been domesticated by matri- 
mony and maternity is as tranquil as a tame bull- 
finch. 

Holmes. 

% 

A beautiful woman pleases the eye, a good 
woman pleases the heart; one is a jewel, the 
other a treasure. 

Napoleon I* 

Modesty in woman is a virtue most deserving, 
since we do all we can to cure her of it. 

Lingree. 

When we speed to the devil's house, woman 
takes the lead by a thousand steps. 

Goethe. 

When a woman pronounces the name of a man 
but twice a day, there may be some doubt as to 
the nature of her sentiments; but three times! 

Balzac. 

m 

Women know by nature how to disguise their 
emotions far better than the most consummate 
male courtier can do. 

Thackeray. 
13 



I 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Beauty is worse than wine; it intoxicates both 
the holder and the beholder. 

Zimmerman, 



Woman alone knows true loyalty of affection. 

Schiller. 



Women are never stronger than when they 
arm themselves with their weakness. 

Mme» du Deffand. 

Women are apt to see chiefly the defects of a 
man of talent and the merits of a fool. 

Anonymous. 

K 

Women have a perpetual envy of our vices; 
they are less vicious than we, not from choice, 
but because we restrict them; they are the slaves 
of order and fashion. 

Johnson. 

% 

What is it that renders friendship between 
women so lukewarm and of so short a duration? 
It is the interests of love and the jealousy of 
conquest. 

Rousseau. 

14 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

It is generally a feminine eye that first detects 
the moral deficiencies hidden under the " dear 
deceit" of beauty. 

George Eliot. 

I detest those women who mount the pulpit 
and lay their passions bare. 

Eugenie de Guerin. 

m 

Of all men, Adam was the happiest; he had no 
mother-in-law. 

Par/ait. 

A mother's tenderness and caresses are the 
milk of the heart. 

Eugenie de Guerin, 

Lovers have in their language an infinite num- 
ber of words in which each syllable is a caress. 

Rochepedre. 

To love is the least of the faults of a loving 
woman. 

La Rochefoucauld. 

There is nothing in love but what we imagine. 

J"*. Beuve. 
*5 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Beloved darlings, who cover over and shadow 
many malicious purposes with a counterfeit pas- 
sion of dissimulate sorrow and unquietness. 

Sir Walter Raleigh. 

I am a strenuous advocate for liberty and 
property, but when these rights are invaded by 
a pretty woman, I am neither able to defend my 
money nor my freedom. 

Junius. 

There are more people who wish to be loved 
than there are who are willing to love. 

Chamfortm 

To educate a man is to form an individual who 
leaves nothing behind him; to educate a woman 
is to form future generations. 

Laboulaye. 

m 

There are no women to whom virtue comes 
easier than those who possess no attractions. 

Anonymous, 

In courting women, many dry wood for a fire 
that will not burn for them. 

Balzac. 
16 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

It is no more possible to do without a wife 
than it is to dispense with eating and drinking. 

Luther. 
K 

God created the coquette as soon as he made 
the fool. 

Hugo, 

m 

The sweetest thing in life is the unclouded 
welcome of a wife. 

Willis. 

Trust not a woman, even when dead. 

Latin Proverb, 



I have seen more than one woman drown her 
honour in the clear water of diamonds. 

Corntesse d'Houdetot. 

Who trusts himself to woman or to waves 
should never hazard what he fears to lose. 

Oldmixon* 



It is vanity that renders the youth of women 
culpable and their old age ridiculous. 

Mme. de Sonza. 
17 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

There are three things that women throw 
away — their time, their money, and their health. 

Madame Geoff rin. 



The pleasant man a woman will desire for her 
own sake, but the languishing lover has nothing 
to hope from her but pity. 

Steele. 

Woman is an overgrown child that one amuses 
with toys, intoxicates with flattery, and seduces 
with promises. 

Sophie Jlrnould. 

True modesty protects a woman better than 
her garments. 

J&nonymous. 

Woman is the sweetest present that God has 
given to man. 

Guyard, 

Coquetry is a continual lie, which renders a 
woman more contemptible and more dangerous 
than a courtesan who never lies. 

De Varennes. 

18 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Coquetry is the desire to please, without the 
want of love. 

Rochepedre. 

Before marriage, woman is a queen; after 
marriage, a subject. 

De Maintenon. 

The test of civilization is the estimate of 
woman. 

Curtis. 



Provided a woman be well-principled she has 
dowry enough. 

Plautus* 

The more women have risked, the more they 
are willing to sacrifice. 

Dados. 



A flattered woman is always indulgent. 

Chenier* 



Beauty is the eye's food and the soul's sorrow. 

German Proverb, 
19 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Some cunning men choose fools for their 
wives, thinking to manage them, but they always 
fail. 

Johnson. 



A termagant wife may, therefore, in some re- 
spects be considered a tolerable blessing. 

Irving. 



Divination seems heightened to its highest 
power in woman. 

Bronson Jllcott. 



Silence has been given to woman to better 
express her thoughts. 

Desnoyers. 

Women are supernumerary when present, and 
missed when absent. 

Portuguese Proverb. 

na 

A coquette is more occupied with the homage 
we refuse her than with what we bestow upon 
her. 

Dupuy. 
20 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The virtuous woman who falls in love is much 
to be pitied. 

La Rochefoucauld* 



Women are extremists; they are either better 
or worse than men. 

La Bruyere* 



Woman is the crime of man. She has been 
his victim since Eden. She wears on her flesh 
the trace of six thousand years of injustice. 

Petletan. 

Socrates studied under Aspasia, and Aspasia 
governed the world under the name of Pericles. 

Houssaye. 

The one who has read the book that is called 
woman knows more than the one who has grown 
pale in libraries. 

Houssaye. 

®£ 

Woman is the eighth capital sin, but she is 
perhaps the fourth theological virtue. 

Houssaye, 
21 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

From women's eyes this doctrine I derive: 
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; 
They are the books, the arts, the academes, 
That show, contain, and nourish all the world. 

Shakespeare. 

Consideration for woman is the measure of a 
nation's progress in social life. 

Gregoire. 

m 

There is something of woman in everything 
that pleases. 

Dupaty. 

The anger of a woman is the greatest evil with 
which one can threaten enemies. 

Chilton, 

I would have a woman as true as death. At 
the first real lie that works from the heart out- 
ward, she should be tenderly chloroformed into 
a better world. 

Holmes. 

There is no jewel in the world so valuable as a 
chaste and virtuous woman. 

Cervantes. 
22 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

No man has yet discovered the means of giving 
successfully friendly advice to women— -not even 
to his own. 

Balzac. 

Nature has given to women fortitude enough 
to resist a certain time, but not enough to resist 
completely the inclination which they cherish. 

Dorat. 

Without woman the two extremes of life would 
be without succour, and the middle without 
pleasure. 

Jinonymous. 

In all eras and all climes a woman of great 
genius or beauty has done what she chose. 

Ouida. 

He that hath wife and children hath given 
hostages to fortune; for they are impediments 
to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. 

Bacon. 

- % 

A woman would be in despair if Nature had 
formed her as fashion makes her appear. 

Mdlle. de Lespinasse. 
23 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The resistance of a woman is not always a 
proof of her virtue, but more frequently of her 
experience. 

Ninon de VEnclos. 

What a wilful, wayward thing is woman! 
Even in their best pursuits so loose of soul that 
every breath of passion shakes their frame. 

Francis, 

$£ 

The love of woman is universally for one man. 
Even though degraded, half-unsexed, outcast, 
abandoned to despair, she inflexibly seeks her 
individual own. 

Browne. 

m 

Rascal! that word on the lips of a woman, ad- 
dressed to a too daring man, often means angel! 

Jinonymous. 

Women have no worse enemies than women. 

Duclos, 

With what hope can we endeavour to persuade 
the ladies that the time spent at the toilet is lost 
in vanity. 

Johnson* 
24 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A mother's prayers, silent and gentle, can 
never miss the road to the throne of all bounty. 

Beecher. 



Venus always saves the lover whom she leads. 

Delatouche. 

Women. Their love first inspires the poet, and 
their praise is his best reward. 

Holmes. 

Why should man, who is strong, always get 
the best of it, and be forgiven so much; and 
woman, who is weak, get the worst, and be for- 
given so little? 

Mrs. W. K* Clifford. 

A good-tempered woman, of the order yclept 
buxom, not only warrants a pair of expansive 
shoulders, but bespeaks our approbation of them. 

Leigh Hunt. 

What we call in men wisdom is in women 
prudence. It is a partiality to call one greater 
than the other. 

Steele. 

25 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

An undoubted, uncontested, conscious beauty 
is, of all women, the least sensible of flattery. 

Chesterfield. 

Women who have not fine teeth laugh only 
with their eyes. 

Mme, de Rieujc. 

K 

Men love at first and most warmly; women 
love last and longest. This is natural enough; 
for nature makes women to be won and men to 
win. 

Curtis. 
K 

Women generally consider consequences in 
love, seldom in resentment. 

Cotton. 
K 

Woo the widow whilst she is in weeds. 

German Proverb. 

Wounds of the heart! your traces are bitter, 
slow to heal, and always ready to re-open. 

De Musset. 



The head is always the dupe of the heart. 

La Rochefoucauld. 

26 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

O women! you are very extraordinary chil- 
dren. 

Diderot. 
X 

There are different kinds of love, but they 
have all the same aim: possession. 

ttoqueplan. 

A man who can love deeply is never utterly 
contemptible. 

Balzac. 

There is not a love, however violent it may be, 
to which ambition and interest do not add some- 
thing. 

La Bruyere. 

K 

A man philosophizes better than a woman on 
the human heart, but she reads the hearts of men 
better than he. 

Rousseau. 

What a woman should demand of a man in 
courtship, or after it, is, first, respect for her, as 
she is a woman; and next to that, to be re- 
spected by him above all other women. 

Lamb. 

27 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The great defect in men is that they never put 
themselves in the place of the woman they judge. 

Mme. WEpinay. 



If love gives wit to fools, it undoubtedly takes 
it from wits. 



A beautiful and chaste woman is the perfect 
workmanship of God, the true glory of angels, 
the rare miracle of earth, and the sole wonder 
of the world. 

Hermes. 

Just corporeal enough to attest humanity, yet 
sufficiently transparent to let the celestial origin 
shine through. 

Ruffini. 



If we wish to know the political and moral 
condition of a State, we must ask what rank 
women hold in it. Their influence embraces the 
whole of life. 

JUtni Martin. 

28 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A woman, — where can she put her hope in 
storms, if not in Heaven? 

Mitchell. 



Woman's heart is like a lithographer's stone, 
— what is once written upon it cannot be rubbed 
out. 

Thackeray. 

The lives of a multitude of women all around 
us contain a large element of unsuccessful out- 
ward or inward ambitions, — vain attempts and 
prayers. 

Mger, 

An ideal type, in which meekness, gentleness, 
patience, humility, faith and love are the most 
prominent features, is not naturally male, but 
female. 

Lecky. 

The vainest woman is never thoroughly con- 
scious of her own beauty till she is loved by the 
man who sets her own passion vibrating in re- 
turn. 

George Eliot. 

29 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Even though the wife be little, bow down to 
her in speaking. 

Talmud* 

We men have no right to say it, but the omnip- 
otence of Eve is in humility. 

Emerson. 

Rejected lovers need never despair! There are 
four and twenty hours in a day, and not a mo- 
ment in the twenty-four in which a woman may 
not change her mind. 

De Finod. 

There are few husbands whom the wife cannot 
win in the long run by patience and love, unless 
they are harder than the rocks which the soft 
water penetrates in time. 

Marguerite de Valois* 

The only true and firm friendship is that be- 
tween man and woman, because it is the only 
affection exempt from actual or possible rivalry. 

Ji. Comte. 

m 

The yoke of love is sometimes heavier than 
that of all the virtues. 

Montaigne. 

30 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

"Tis a terrible thing that we cannot wish young 
ladies well without wishing them to become old 
women. 

Johnson. 

Love is the poetry of the senses. 

Balzac, 

Love is the beginning, the middle, and the end 
of everything. 

Lacordaire. 

Women are constantly the dupes, or the vic- 
tims of their extreme sensitiveness. 

Balzac. 

$£ 

When a man says he has a wife, it means that 
a wife has him. 

Gavarni. 

Woman is more constant in hatred than in 
love. 

Jinonymous. 

A woman dies twice; the day that she quits 
life, and the day that she ceases to please. 

Weiss. 

3* 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Love is the association of two beings for the 
benefit of one. 

Countess Nathalie. 



What a woman wills, God wills. 

Proverb, 



Some women kindle emotion so rapidly in a 
man's heart, that the judgment cannot keep pace 
with it. 

Hardy* 

<m 

The Bible says that woman is the last thing 
which God made. He must have made it on 
Saturday night. It shows fatigue. 

Dumas. 



Woman's power is for rule, not for battle; 
and her intellect is not for invention or creation, 
but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and deci- 
sion. 

Ruskin. 

Woman is a delightful musical instrument, of 
which love is the bow and man the artist. 

Bayle* 
3* 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Fit the same intellect to a man, and it is a 
bowstring; to a woman, and it is a harpstring. 

Holmes. 



Be women heard; they care not for the rest. 

Jiljieri. 

% 

Learned women have lost all credit by their 
impertinent talkativeness and conceit. 

Swift. 

m 

The coquette compromises her reputation, and 
sometimes even her virtue; the prude, on the 
contrary, often sacrifices her honour in private, 
and preserves it in public. 

Mnte. du Socage, 
K 

When a woman has explicitly condemned a 
given action, she apparently gathers courage for 
its commission under a little different conditions. 

Ho wells. 

There are three things I have always loved and 
have never understood — painting, music, and 
woman. 

Fontenelle* 
33 



y 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The Divine Right of Beauty is the only one an 
Englishman ought to acknowledge, and a pretty 
woman is the only tyrant he is not authorized to 
resist. 

Junius, 
*£ 

The beauty of a lovely woman is like music. 

George Eliot. 

* 

If there be any one whose power is in beauty, 
in purity, in goodness, it is woman. 

Beecher. 

m 

God created woman only to tame man. 

Voltaire. 

% 

O woman! it is thou that causeth the tempests 
that agitate mankind. 

Rousseau. 
K 

The laughter, the tears, and the song of a 
woman are equally deceptive. 

Latin Proverb* 

m 

A woman's lot is made for her by the love 
she accepts. 

George Eliot, 

34 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Woman is an idol that man worships until he 
throws it down, 

Jlnonytnous. 

The only way to get the upper hand of a 
woman, is to be more woman than she is herself. 

J&nonymous. 

m 

She who dresses for others besides her hus- 
band marks herself a wanton. 

Euripides. 

With soft persuasive prayers woman wields 
the sceptre of the life which she charmeth. 

Schiller. 

K 

Men are the cause of women's dislike for one 
another. 

La Bruyere. 

The beautiful woman always gives me joy, and 
a high mind, too, if I think what she does for me. 

Reinmar. 

Women have the genius of charity. A man 
gives but his gold; a woman adds to it her 
sympathy. 

Legouve. 

35 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The homage of a man may be delightful until 
he asks straight for love, by which woman 
renders homage. 

George Eliot. 

K 

A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking 
on his hind legs. It is not done well, but you 
are surprised to find it done at all. 

Johnson. 

The devastating egotism of man is properly 
foreign to woman; though there are many 
women as haughty, hard, and imperious as any 
man. 

There are some women who think virtue was 
given them as claws were given to cats — to do 
nothing but scratch with. 

Jerrold. 

An immodest woman is food without salt. 

Jirabian Proverb. 

The evil in women is usually communicated by 
men. Much of the deceit of which they are 
accused is the effect of masculine inoculation. 

Browne. 

36 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The lover never sees personal resemblances in 
his mistress to her kindred or to others. 

Emerson. 



Woman is the blood royal of life; let there be 
slight degrees of precedence among them, but let 
them all be sacred. 

Burns, 

The woman who is resolved to be respected 
can make herself to be so, even amidst an army 
of soldiers. 

Cervantes. 

m 

To form devices quick is woman's wit. 

Euripides, 

Woman's power is over the affections. A 
beautiful dominion is hers, but she risks its 
forfeiture when she seeks to extend it. 

Bovee. 

To remain virtuous, a man has only to combat 
his own desires; a woman must resist her own 
inclinations and the continual attack of man. 

De Latently 

37 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The friendship of a man is often a support; 
that of a woman is always a consolation. 

Rochepedre. 



A cunning woman is a knavish fool. 

Lyttleton. 

A woman often thinks she regrets the lover, 
when she only regrets the love. 

La Rochefoucauld. 



Even the satyrs, like men, in one way or an- 
other, could win the love of a woman. 

Malcolm Johnson. 

You wish to create Eve over again, or rather 
to call forth a female Adam. I object. 

Sheldon. 

Let a man pray that none of his woman-kind 
should form a just estimation of him. 

Thackeray. 

% 

In love, she who gives heir portrait promises 
the original. 

Dupuy. 

38 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The man who seems to care little whether he 
charms or attracts women is he who offends and 
seduces. 

Goethe. 

To correct the faults of man, we address the 
head; to correct those of woman, we address 
the heart. 

De Beauchene. 

The man flaps about with a bunch of feathers; 
the woman goes to work softly with a cloth. 

Holmes. 

Glory can be for a woman but the brilliant 
mourning of happiness. 

Mme, de Stael. 

Women have more of what is termed good 
sense than men. They cannot reason wrong, for 
they do not reason at all. 

Hazlitt. 

In anger against a rival, all women, even 
duchesses, employ invective. Then they make 
use of everything as a weapon. 

Jinonymous. 
39 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

What is civilization? I answer, the power of 
good women. 

Emerson. 

The one thing finished in this hasty world. 

Lowell, 

The egotism of woman is always for two. 

Mme. de Stael* 

The wisest woman you talk with is ignorant of 
something that you know, but an elegant woman . 
never forgets her elegance. 

Holmes* 

% 

A widow is like a frigate of which the first 
captain has been shipwrecked. 

MCarr* 
K 

Where women are, are all kinds of mischief. 

Men.and.er. 

% 

No man knows what the wife of his bosom is 
— no man knows what a ministering angel she 
is — until he has gone with her through the fiery 
trials of this world. 

Irving. 

40 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Women have, in general, but one object, which 
is their beauty; upon which scarce any flattery 
is too gross for them. 

Chesterfield. 

If Cleopatra's nose had been shorter, the face 
of the whole world would have been changed. 

Pascal, 

A worthless girl has enslaved me, — me, whom 
no enemy ever did. 

Epictetus, 

Woman is the symbol of moral and physical 
beauty. 

Gautier. 

in 

An indigent female, the object probably of love 
and tenderness in her youth, at a more advanced 
age a withered flower, has nothing to do but 
retire and die. 

Hall. 
* 

A beautiful woman is the paradise of the eyes, 
the hell of the soul, and the purgatory of the 
purse. 

Jtnonymous* 
41 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

In love affairs, from innocence to the fault, 
there is but a kiss. 

Jllberic Second* 

The destiny of women is to please, to be 
amiable, and to be loved. 

Rochebrune. 

% 

If you would make a pair of good shoes, take 
for the sole the tongue of a woman; it never 
wears out. 

Jilsatian Proverb. 

m 

Fain. — To give her her Due she has Wit. 

Mira. — She has Beauty enough to make any 
Man think so, and Complaisance enough not to 
contradict him who shall tell her so. 

Congreve. 

$£ 

A man must be a fool who does not succeed in 
making a woman believe that which flatters her. 

Balzac. 

I have seen faces of women that were fair to 
look upon, yet one could see that the icicles were 
forming round these women's hearts. 

Holmes. 

42 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The highest mark of esteem a woman can give 
a man is to ask his friendship, and the most 
signal proof of her indifference is to offer him 
hers. 

Jlnonymous. 

The fire of woman's passion, consuming the 
wilderness of her limitation, rises to the pure 
flame that has blazed on every altar of Eros be- 
tween the Nile and the Columbis. 

Browne, 

f% 

She could not reconcile the anxieties of spir- 
itual life, involving eternal consequences, with a 
keen interest in gimp and artificial protrusions 
of drapery. 

George Eliot. 

The tears of a young widow lose their bitter- 
ness when wiped by the hands of love. 

Jinonymous. 

Women are the happiest beings of the crea- 
tion; in compensation for our services, they re- 
ward us with a happiness of which they retain 
more than half. 

De Uarennes* 
43 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Venus herself, if she were bald, would not be 
Venus. 

Jipuleius. 

m 

Frailty! thy name is woman. 

Shakespeare. 

No woman is too silly not to have a genius for 
spite. 

Jlnonymous. 

Women often deceive to conceal what they 
feel; men to simulate what they do not feel — 
love. 

£ Le Souve. 

There is no compensation for the woman who 
feels that the chief relation of her life has been 
a mistake. She has lost her crown. 

George Eliot. 

The secret of youthful looks in an aged face is 
easy shoes, easy corsets, and an easy conscience. 

Jinonymous. 

Who does not know the bent of woman's 
fancy? 

Spenser. 
44 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Love makes mutes of those who habitually 
speak most fluently. 

De Scuderi. 

<&§ 

Every great passion is but a prolonged hope. 

Feucheres. 

* 

A woman is happy and attains all that she 
desires when she captivates a man; hence the 
great object of her life is to master the art of 
captivating men. 

Tolstoi. 

There are plenty of women who believe women 
to be incapable of anything but to cook, incap- 
able of interest in affairs. 

Emerson. 

Beauty in woman is power. 

De Rotrou, 

We are by no means aware how much we are 
influenced by our passions. 

La Rochefoucauld* 

Glances are the first billets-doux of love. 

De L'Enclos* 

45 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

To love is to admire with the heart; to admire 
is to love with the mind. 

Gautier. 

m 

Beauty and ugliness disappear equally under 
the wrinkles of age; one is lost in them, the other 
hidden. 

PetiUSenn. 

Where pride begins, love ends. 

Lavater. 

The girl who wakes the poet's sigh is a very 
different creature from the girl who makes his 
soup. 

Sheldon. 

Women know a point more than the devil. 

Italian Proverb. 

To a gentleman every woman is a lady in right 
of her sex. 

Lytton 

Great women belong to history and to self- 
sacrifice. 

Leigh Hunt. 

4 6 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Did you ever hear of a man's growing lean by 
the reading of " Romeo and Juliet," or blowing 
his brains out because Desdemona was maligned? 

Holmes* 

The heart of a coquette is like a rose, of which 
the lovers pluck the leaves, leaving only the 
thorns for the husband. 

Anonymous. 

In our age women commonly preserve the 
publication of their good offices and their vehe- 
ment affection toward their husbands until they 
have lost them. 

Montaigne, 

When women cannot be revenged, they do as 
children do — they then cry. 

Cardan* 

The knowledge of the charms one possesses 
prompts one to utilize them. 

Senancourt. 

There is no more agreeable companion than 
the one woman who loves us. 

St, Pierre, 

47 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The man who has taken one wife deserves a 
crown of patience; the man who has taken two 
deserves two crowns of pity. 

Proverb, 

% 

At twenty, man is less a lover of woman than 
of women; he is more in love with the sex than 
with the individual, however charming she may 
be. 

La Bretonne. 

Jealousy is the sister of love, as the devil is 
the brother of the angels. 

Souffle rs. 



Men bestow compliments only on women who 
deserve none. 

Bachi. 

Two smiles that approach each other end in a 
kiss. 

Hugo. 

There is in every true woman's heart a spark 
of heavenly fire, which beams and blazes in the 
dark hours of adversity. 

Irving. 

4 8 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

There is a woman at the beginning of all great 
things. 

Lamartine. 

Women prefer us to say a little evil of them, 
rather than to say nothing of them at all. 

Ricard. 



One syllable of woman's speech can dissolve 
more of love than a man's heart can hold. 

Holmes. 

A woman is seldom tenderer to a man than 
immediately after she has deceived him. 

Jinonymous. 

m 

Women like balls and assemblies, as a hunter 
likes a place where game abounds. 

De Latena. 

yg 

Fortune rules in nuptials; women are as like 
to turn out badly as to prove a source of joy. 

Euripides. 

One of the sweetest pleasures of a woman is 
to cause regret. 

Chevalier. 

49 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A woman is never displeased if we please sev- 
eral other women, provided she is preferred. It 
is so many more triumphs for her. 

Ninon de VEnclos. 



Women, deceived by men, want to marry 
them; it is a kind of revenge, as good as any 
other. 

Beaumanoir. 

Man without woman is head without body; 
woman without man is body without head. 

German Proverb, 

Wrinkles disfigure a woman less than ill- 
nature. 

Dupuy. 

I am sure I do not mean it an injury to women 
when I say there is a sort of sex in souls. 

Steele. 

$§ 

A woman, when she has passed forty, becomes 
an illegible scrawl; only an old woman is capable 
of divining old women. 

Balzac. 

So 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A beautiful woman is never silly; she has the 
best wit that a man may ask of a woman, she is 
pretty. 

Stahl. 



All the reasons of men are not worth one 
sentiment of woman. 

Voltaire. 

% 

A man never knows how to live until a woman 
has lived with him. 

Jtfere. 

It may not be impossible to find a constant 
heart in an unfaithful body. 

Stahl. 
K 

Jealousy for a woman is only a wound to self- 
respect. In man it is a torture profound as 
moral suffering, continuous as physical suffering. 

France. 

Women wish to be loved, not because they are 
pretty or good or well-bred or graceful or intelli- 
gent, but because they are themselves. 

Jkmiel. 

Si 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Women may be pardoned for lack of common 
sense. The culprit in them is the heart. 

Stahl. 

K 
One must be sensual to be human. 

France. 

K 

Love is composed of so many sensations, that 
something new of it can always be said. 

Saint Prosper, 

A woman is frank when she is not uselessly 
untruthful. 

France, 

Love preserves beauty, and the flesh of woman 
is fed with caresses as are bees with flowers. 

France, 

Every lover who tries to find in love anything 
else than love is not a lover. 

Bourget, 

When a lover gives, he demands — and much 
more than he has given. 

Parry, 

52 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The history of love would be the history of 
humanity; it would be a beautiful book to write. 

J^lodier. 

In most men there is a dead poet whom the 
man survives. 

St, Beuve. 



The Egyptian people, wisest then of nations, 
gave to their Spirit of Wisdom the form of a 
woman; and into her hand, for a symbol, the 
weaver's shuttle. 

Raskin. 

The life of a woman can be divided into three 
epochs; in the first she dreams of love, in the 
second she experiences it, in the third she regrets 
it. 

SainUProsper. 

m 

The ruses of women multiply with their years. 

Proverb. 



Society depends upon women. The nations 
who confine them are unsociable. 

Voltaire. 

53 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A beautiful woman with the qualities of a noble 
man is the most perfect thing in nature. 

La Bruyere. 

Woman, in accordance with her unbroken, 
clear-seeing nature, loses herself and what she 
has of heart and happiness in the object she 
loves. 

Richter. 

Society is the book of women. 

Rousseau, 

$i 

Women, like princes, find few real friends. 

Lyttleton. 

m 

In love affairs, a young shepherdess is a better 
partner than an old queen. 

De Finod. 

To " Get out of my house," and " What do you 
want with my wife? " there is no answer. 

Don Quixote. 

m 

Woman is a flower that exhales her perfume 
only in the shade. 

De Lamennais. 

54 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Our ice-eyed brain women are really admirable 
if we only ask of them just what they can give, 
and no more. 

Holmes. 



A marriageable girl is a kind of merchandise 
that can be negotiated at wholesale only on con- 
dition that no one takes a part at retail. 

Karr. 

m 

An honest woman is the one we fear to com- 
promise. 

Balzac. 

A woman, the more curious she is about her 
face, is commonly the more careless about her 
home. 

Jonson, 

m 

Heaven has refused genius to woman, in order 
to concentrate all the fire in her heart. 

Rivarol. 



The two pleasantest days of a woman are her 
marriage day and the day of her funeral. 

Hlpponax, 

55 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A woman who writes commits two sins; she 
increases the number of books, and decreases 
the number of women. 

Karr. 

K 

A lady's wish — he said, with a certain gal- 
lantry of manner — makes slaves of us all. 

Holmes. 

In nineteen cases out of twenty, for a woman 
to play her heart in the game of love is to play 
at cards with a sharper, and gold coin against 
counterfeit pieces. 

Bourget. 

Women are at ease in perfidy, as are serpents 
in bushes. 

Feu Met. 

g 

Women see without looking; their husbands 
often look without seeing. 

Desnoyers. 

* 

Most women who ride well on horseback have 
little tenderness. Like the Amazons, they lack 
a breast. 

•Anonymous. 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Earth has nothing more tender than a woman's 
heart when it is the abode of pity. 

Luther. 

m 

In wishing to control her empire, woman 
destroys it. 

C a nab is. 

Wherever women are honoured, the gods are 
satisfied. 

Laws of M anu. 

To a woman, the romances she makes are more 
amusing than those she reads. 

Gautier. 

O woman! lovely woman! Nature made thee 
To temper man: we had been brutes without ye. 

Otway. 

Oh women, women, 
When you are pleased you are the least of evils. 

Beaumont and Fletcher. 



When an old crone frolics, she flirts with 
death. 

Syrus. 

57 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Sensualism intrudes into the educatipn of 
young women, and withers the hope and affec- 
tion of human nature. 

Emerson. 

There never was in any age such a wonder to 
be found as a dumb woman. 

Plautus. 

Wives are young men's mistresses, companions 
for middle age, and old men's nurses. 

Bacon, 



Tenderness has no deeper source than the 
heart of a woman, devotion no purer shrine, sac- 
rifice no more saint-like abnegation. 

SainUFoix. 

It is difficult for a woman to keep a secret; 
and I know more than one man who is a woman. 

Lafontaine. 

All the evil that women have done to us comes 
from us, and all the good they have done to us 
comes from them. 

Jiimi Martin. 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Have a useful and good wife in the house, or 
don't marry at all. 

Euripides. 

There are beautiful flowers that are scentless, 
and beautiful women that are unlovable. 

Houelle. 

None can do a woman worse despite than to 
call her old. 

Jiriosto. 

He who flatters women most pleases them best, 
and they are most in love with him whom they 
think is most in love with them. 

Chesterfield. 

Suitors of a wealthy girl seldom seek for proof 
of her past virtue. 

Jlnonymous. 

Imperious Venus is less potent than caressing 
Venus. 

JJnonymous. 

$£ 
Women, asses, and nuts require strong hands. 

Italian Proverb. 

59 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The clown knows very well that the women 
are not in love with him, but with Hamlet, the 
fellow in the black cloak and plumed hat. 

Holmes. 

Do you not know I am a woman? When I 
think, I must speak. 

Shakespeare. 

Woman sends forth her sympathies on adven- 
ture. She embarks her whole soul in the traffic 
of affection; and if shipwrecked, her case is 
hopeless. 

^ Irving. 

A woman is sometimes fugitive, irrational, in- 
determinable, illogical, and contradictory. A 
great deal of forbearance ought to be shown her. 

Jimiel. 

m 

It is born in maidens that they should wish to 
please everything that has eyes. 

Gleim. 

The woman who throws herself at a man's 
head will soon find her place at his feet. 

Desnoyers. 

60 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

What a strange illusion it is to suppose that 
beauty is goodness! A beautiful woman utters 
absurdities: we listen, and we hear not the 
absurdities but wise thoughts. 

Tolstoi, 

A woman cannot guarantee her heart, even 
though her husband be the greatest and most 
perfect of men. 

George Sand, 

Women and wine, game and deceit, make the 
wealth small and the wants great. 

Proverb* 

I confess I like the quality ladies better than 
the common kind even of literary ones. 

Holmes. 

Women sometimes deceive the lover — never 
the friend. 

Mercier, 

You see in no place of conversation the perfec- 
tion of speech so much as in accomplished 
women. 

Steele. 
6l 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A fan is indispensable to a woman who can no 
longer blush. 

Anonymous. 

When a wrong idea possesses a woman, much 
bitterness flows from her tongue. 

Euripides. 

Marriage communicates to women the vices of 
men, but never their virtues. 

Fourier* 

In love, the confidant of a woman's sorrow 
often becomes the consoler of it. 

Anonymous. 

A royal court without women is like a year 
without spring, a spring without flowers. 

Francis I. of France, 

A woman full of faith in the one she loves is 
but a novelist's fancy. 

Balzac. 

Many young girls have a strange audacity 
blended with their instinctive delicacy. 

Holmes. 
62 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

O Pygmalion, who can wonder (no artist 
surely) that thou didst fall in love with the work 
of thine own hands. 

Leigh Hunt. 

The mistakes of a woman result almost always 
from her faith in the good and her confidence in 
the truth. 

Balzac, 

Let an action be never so trivial in itself, 
women always make it appear of the most im- 
portance. 

Pope. 

There are only two beautiful things in the 
world — women and roses; and only two sweet 
things — women and melons. 

Mather be. 

Friendship that begins between a man and a 
woman will soon change its name. 

Anonymous. 

m 

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, 
have no history. 

George Eliot. 

63 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Before promising a woman to love only her, 
one should have seen them all, or should see only 
her. 

£ Dapay. 

Women are formed by nature to feel some 
consolation in present troubles, by having them 
always in their mouth and on their tongue. 

Euripides* 

Women give entirely to their affections, set 
their whole fortunes on the die, lose themselves 
eagerly in the glory of their husbands and chil- 
dren. 

Emerson. 

ME 

Love lessens the woman's refinement and 
strengthens the man's. 

Richter. 

Who takes an eel by the tail, or a woman at 
her word, soon finds he holds nothing. 

Proverb. 

Homeliness is the best guardian of a young 
girl's virtue. 

M me. tie Genlis. 

64 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

In condemning the vanity of women, men com- 
plain of the fire they themselves have kindled. 

Lingree. 



We ask four things for a woman — that virtue 
dwell in her heart, modesty in her forehead, 
sweetness in her mouth, and labour in her hands. 

Chinese Proverb. 

In all ill-matched marriages, the fault is less 
the woman's than the man's, as the choice de- 
pended on her the least. 

Mme. de Rieujc. 

in 

Women are like tricks by sleight of hand, 
Which to admire, we should not understand. 

Congreve. 

What colour would it not have given to my 
thoughts, and what thrice-washed whiteness to 
my words, had I been fed on woman's praises. 

Holmes. 

One may see the heart of women through the 
rents which one may make in their self-love. 

Jlnonymous. 

65 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Women always speak the truth, but not the 
whole truth. 

Italian Proverb. 

If all women's faces were cast in the same 
mould, that mould would be the grave of love. 

Bichat. 



Women and music should never be dated. 

Goldsmith. 

v& 

Men never are consoled for their first love, nor 
women for their last. 

Weiss. 

A timorous woman often drops into her grave 
before she is done deliberating. 

Jiddison. 

It is much worse to irritate an old woman 
than a dog. 

Menander. 
% 

Woman is a charming creature, who changes 
her heart as easily as her gloves. 

Balzac. 

66 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Women go further in love than most men, but 
men go further in friendship than women. 

La Bruyere. 



Woman's function is a guiding, not a deter- 
mining one. 

Raskin. 

a 

At first woman fosters our dearest hopes with 
the affection of a mother; then, like a giddy hen 
she forsakes the nest. 

Goethe, 

K 

A girl of sixteen accepts love; a woman of 
thirty incites it. 

Ricard, 

There are women so hard to please that it 
seems as if nothing less than an angel will suit 
them; hence it comes that they often meet with 
devils. 

Marguerite de Valois. 



A secret passion defends the heart of a woman 
better than her moral sense. 

De La Bretonne. 

6? 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A woman who loves, however erring, can never 
be entirely selfish, for love has a humanizing 
influence, and a true passion renders any self- 
sacrifice easy. 

Peabody. 

% 

Women's hearts are made of stout leather; 
there's a plaguy sight of wear in them. 

Haliburton, 

A woman who pretends to laugh at love is like 
the child who sings at night when he is afraid. 

Rousseau, 

Woman among savages is a beast of burden; 
in Asia she is a piece of furniture; in Europe 
she is a spoiled child. 

De Meilhan, 

% 

Women that are least bashful are not infre- 
quently the most modest. 

Cotton, 

True feeling is a rustic vulgarity the flirt does 
not tolerate; she counts its healthiest and most 
honest manifestation all sentiment. 

Mitchell. 
68 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Shakespeare has no heroes, he has only hero- 
ines. 

Rusk in. 

Some men are different; all women are alike. 

Delvau, 
% 

The empire of woman is an empire of sweet- 
ness, skilf ulness, and attractiveness; her orders 
are caresses, her evils are tears. 

Rousseau, 

Women need not be beautiful every day of 
their lives; it is sufficient that they have mo- 
ments which one does not forget, and the return 
of which one expects. 

Cherbuliez. 

m 

There are some lips from which even the 
proudest women love to hear the censure which 
appears to disprove indifference. 

Lyttorio 

At the age of sixty, to marry a beautiful girl of 
sixteen is to imitate those ignorant people who 
buy books to be read by their friends. 

Ricard. 

6 9 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

It is in the nature of the feminine sex to seek 
here below to corrupt men, and therefore wise 
men never abandon themselves to the seductions 
of women. 

Laws of Manu. 



Would that the race of women had never 
existed — except for me alone! 

Euripides, 



Fools that on women trust; for in their speech 
is death, hell in their smile. 

Tasso. 

Women forgive injuries, but never forget 
slights. 

Haliburton. 
& 

The virtue of women is often the love of repu- 
tation and quiet. 

Rochefoucauld* 
% 

Woman is the most precious jewel taken from 
Nature's casket for the ornamentation and hap- 
piness of man. 

Guyard. 
70 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Women have such a wonderful power of se- 
creting adjectives that they cannot speak the 
truth when they try. 

'Sheldon. 

m 

Women divine that they are loved long before 
it is told them. 

Marivaux. 

% 

The nervous fluid in man is consumed by the 
brain, in woman by the heart; it is there that 
they are most sensitive. 

Bayle. 

Nature made 
Nothing but women dangerous and fair; 
Therefore if you should chance to see 'em, 
Avoid 'em straight, I charge you! 

Davenant and Dry den. 



Woman's natural mission is to love, to love 
but one, to love always. 

Michelet. 

m 

A woman whose ruling passion is not vanity is 
superior to any man of equal capacity. 

Lavater. 

71 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The virtue of widows is a laborious virtue; 
they have to combat constantly with the re- 
membrance of past bliss. 

Jerome, 

in 

One reason why women are forbidden to 
preach the gospel is that they would persuade 
without argument and reprove without giving 
offence. 

John Newton. 

How little do lovely women know what awful 
beings they are in the eyes of inexperienced 
youth. 

Irving, 

Love is a bird that sings in the heart of a 
woman. 

Karr. 

Woman's happiness is in obeying. She objects 
to men who abdicate too much. 

Michelet. 

m 

Nature sent woman into the world with the 
bridal dower of love. 

Richter. 

72 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

During their youth women wish to be treated 
as divinities; they adore the ideal; they cannot 
bear the idea of being what Nature wishes them 
to be. 

Jlnonymous. 

% 

The moral amelioration of man constitutes the 
chief mission of women. 

Contte, 

Most ladies who have had what is considered 
as an education, have no idea of an education 
progressive through life. 

Foster, 

One of the principal occupations of men is to 
divine women. 

Lacretelle. 

Men do not always love those they esteem; 
women, on the contrary, esteem only those they 
love. 

Dubay. 

I will not affirm that women have no character; 
rather, they have a new one every day. 

Heine, 

73 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The only person who can cure one of a woman 
is that woman herself. 

Jitionymous. 



Virtue is a beautiful thing in women when they 
don't go about with it like a child with a drum, 
making all sorts of noise with it. 

Jerrold. 

Wiles and deceits are woman's specialities. 

JEschylus. 

K 

What man seeks in love is woman; what 
woman seeks in love is man. 

Houssaye. 

There is no grace that is taught by the dancing- 
master, no style adopted into the etiquette of 
courts, but was first the whim and mere action 
of some brilliant woman. 

Emerson. 

The conversation of women in society resem- 
bles the straw used in packing china; it is noth- 
ing, yet without it, everything would be broken. 

Mtne. de Saint. 

74 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The woman who does not choose to love should 
cut the matter short at once by holding out no 
hope to her suitor. 

Marguerite de Valois. 

m 

A woman forgives the audacity which her 
beauty has prompted us to be guilty of. 

Lesage, 

m 

To marry a wife, if we regard the truth, is an 
evil, but it is a necessary evil. 

Menander, 

Nothing is more difficult to choose than a good 
husband — unless it be to choose a good wife. 

Rousseau, 

The rudest man, inspired by love, is more per- 
suasive than the most eloquent man, if uninspired. 

La Rochefoucauld* 

One of the sweetest pleasures of a woman is to 
cause regret. 

Gaoarni. 

m 

Constancy is the chimera of love. 

Vauvenargues. 
75 



WOMAN AND HER WiTS 

One single honest man may yet be seen; but 
wander all the world round to find one honest 
woman, he will search in vain. 

Wieland. 

The pretension of youth always gives to a 
woman a few more years than she really has. 

Joaay, 

I have only one advice to give you — fall in 
love with all women. 

Mont mar in. 

A beautiful face is the most beautiful of all 
spectacles. 

La Bruyere. 

The sweetest harmony is the sound of the voice 
of the woman one loves. 

La Bruyere. 

To marry is to domesticate the Recording 
Angel! 

Stevenson, 

When one writes of woman he must reserve the 
right to laugh at his ideas of the day before. 

Ricard. 

7 6 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Who hath a fair wife hath need of more than 
two eyes. 

Proverb, 

Men bestow compliments only on women who 
deserve none. 

Mme. Bachi. 

£§ 

Woman is more the companion of her own 
thoughts and feelings, and if they are turned to 
ministers of sorrow, where shall she look for 
consolation? 

Irving. 

Vanity, shame, and, above all, temperament 
often makes the valour of men and the virtue of 
women. 

La Rochefoucauld. 

m 

Bachelors are providential beings; God created 
them for the consolation of widows and the hope 
of maids. 

De Finod. 
9§ 

Most women spend their lives in robbing the 
old tree from which Eve plucked the first fruit. 

Feuillet 
77 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

As the faculty of writing is chiefly a masculine 
endowment, the reproach of making the world 
miserable has been always thrown upon the 
women. 

Johnson, 

We look at one little woman's face we love, as 
we look at the face of our mother earth, and see 
all sorts of answers to our yearnings. 

George Eliot, 

K 

There are some women who seem cold and 
beautiful stones, their hearts icicles, their tears 
frozen gems pressed out by injured pride. 

Jilger, 

n 

Position, Wren said, is essential to the perfect- 
ing of beauty — a fine building is lost in a dark 
lane; a statue should be in the air; much more 
true is it of woman. 

Emerson. 

A woman should never accept a lover without 
the consent of her heart, nor a husband without 
the consent of her judgment. 

De Lenclos. 

78 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

What is it that love does to women? Without 
it, she only sleeps; with it alone, she lives. 

Ouida. 



Female levity is no less fatal to them after 
marriage than before. 

Jiddison. 



The highest dressers, the highest face-painters, 
are not the loveliest women, but such as have 
lost their loveliness, or never had any. 

Leigh Hunt. 

The heart of a woman never grows old; when 
it has ceased to love it has ceased to live. 

Rochepedre 

It is only the coward who reproaches as a 
dishonour the love a woman has cherished for 
him. 

Mme. de Lambert. 

There is scarcely a single cause in which a 
woman is not engaged in some way fomenting 
the suit. 

Juvenal. 

79 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Women ask if a man is discreet, as men ask if 
a woman is pretty. 

Jinonymous. 



Neither in adversity nor in the joys of prosper- 
ity let me be associated with womankind. 

JEschylus, 

% 

Do not take women from the bedside of those 
who suffer; it is their post of honour. 

Mme. Fee. 



It is lucky for the poets that their mistresses 
are not obliged to sit to them. They would never 
write a line. 

Leigh Hunt, 

m 

Woman is a changeable thing, as our Virgil 
informed us at school; but her change par ex- 
cellence is from the fairy you woo to the brownie 
you wed. 

Lytton. 
* 

It is easier for a woman to defend her virtue 
against men than her reputation against women. 

Rochebrune, 

80 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Twice is a woman dear — when she comes to 
the house and when she leaves it. 

Anonymous. 

m 

A woman is like your shadow; follow her, she 
flies; fly from her, she follows. 

Proverb. 

How many ways to the heart has a woman? 

Channing. 

% 

What manly eloquence could produce such an 
effect as woman's silence. 

Michelet. 

When maidens sue, men live like gods. 

Proverb* 

m 

I think it takes a great deal from a woman's 
modesty, going into public life; and modesty is 
her greatest charm. 

Mrs. Ward Beecher. 

The passion for praise, which is so very vehe- 
ment in the fair sex, produces excellent effects 
in women of sense. 

Jlddison. 

81 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

With women, friendship ends when rivalry 
begins. 

Mnonymous. 

* 

A woman is easily governed if a man takes her 
hand. 

La Bruyere* 

The lover cannot paint his maiden to his fancy 
poor and solitary. 

Emerson, 

<#§ 

The man who can govern a woman can govern 
a nation. 

Balzac. 

An old woman is a very bad bride, but a very 
good wife. 

Fielding. 

Apelles used to paint a good housewife on a 
snail, to import that she was a home-keeper. 

Howell. 

Man argues woman may not be trusted too far; 
woman feels man cannot be trusted too near. 

Browne, 

82 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Nature has hardly formed a woman ugly 
enough to be insensible to flattery upon her 
person, 

Chesterfield. 

m 

God has placed the genius of women in their 
hearts, because the works of this genius are al- 
ways works of love. 

Lamartine. 

To think of the part one little woman can play 
in the life of a man, so that to renounce her may 
be a very good imitation of heroism, and to win 
her may be a discipline! 

George Eliot* 

When God thought of " Mother " he must have 
laughed with satisfaction, and framed it quickly, 
so rich, so deep, so divine, so full of soul, power, 
and beauty was the conception. 

Beecher. 

m 

A woman may always help her husband by 
what she knows, however little; by what she 
half-knows, or mis-knows, she will only tease 
him. 



83 



Raskin* 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The truth is, women are lost because they do 
not deliberate. 

Jimelia E. Barr. 



Diffuse knowledge generally among women, 
and you will at once cure the conceit which 
knowledge occasions while it is rare. 

Sydney Smith. 

The love of woman has in all ages given birth 
in man to passionate desires, poetic dreams, 
deferential attentions, persuasive forms of polite- 
ness. 

A lady who had not learned discretion by ex- 
perience and came to an evil end. 

Holmes. 

ir 

In the elevated order of ideas, the life of man 
is glory; the life of woman is love. 

Balzac. 

Women have more strength in their looks than 
we have in our laws, and more power by their 
tears than we have by our arguments. 

Saville. 

8 4 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The path of a good woman is indeed strewn 
with flowers; but they rise behind her steps, not 
before them. " Her feet have touched the 
meadows and left the daisies rosy." 

Raskin, 



The masculine personal pronoun is singularly 
restricted in woman's judgment. Passion has 
curtailed her grammar amazingly. She can 
remember only one number (that is Greek). 

Browne. 

Women are a breed the like of which neither 
sea nor earth produces anything; he who is al- 
ways with them knows them best. 

Euripides. 

<£§ 

A woman finds it a much easier task to do an 
evil than a virtuous deed. 

V taut us. 

I have always said it: Nature meant to make 
woman its masterpiece. 

5H Lessing. 

Woman is the organ of the devil. 

De Varennes. 

8S 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

There is nothing sadder than to look at dressy 
old things, who have reached the frozen latitudes 
beyond fifty, and who persist in appearing in the 
airy costume of the tropics. 

Sheldon. 

Women make us lose paradise, but how fre- 
quently we find it again in their arms. 

De hinod. 

m 

Marriage has its unknown great men as war 
has its Napoleons, poetry its Cheniers, and 
philosophy its Descartes. 

Balzac. 

m 

Vanity ruins more women than love. 

Du Deffand. 

% 

Extremes in everything is a characteristic of 

woman. 

De Goncourt. 

$i 

One loves more the first time, better the second. 

Rochepedre* 

k 

Of all religions love is the most deceptive. 

Paleotogue. 

86 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The Indian axiom, " Do not strike even with a 
flower a woman guilty of a hundred crimes," is 
my rule of conduct. 

Balzac. 

To be loved as in books is a dream. 

Bourget. 

The cruellest revenge of a woman is often to 
remain faithful to a man. 

Bossuet. 

Women, cats, and birds are the creatures that 
waste most time on their toilets. 

-Yodier. 

Female goodness seldom keeps its ground 
against laughter, flattery, or fashion. 

Johnson. 

I received money with her, and for the dowry 
have sold my authority. 

Plautus. 



There is no torture that a woman would not 
suffer to enhance her beauty. 

Montaigne. 

87 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Most women proceed like the flea, by leaps and 
jumps. 

Balzac. 



The most fascinating women are those that can 
most enrich the every-day moments of existence. 

Leigh Hunt, 

Learn, above all, how to manage women; their 
thousand " Ahs " and " Ohs," so thousandfold, 
can be cured. 

Goethe. 

All women are fond of minds that inhabit fine 
bodies, and of souls that have fine eyes. 

Joubert. 

When women love us, they forgive us every- 
thing, even our crimes; when they do not love 
us, they give us credit for nothing, not even for 
our virtues. 

Balzac. 

m 

She who spat in my face while I was, shall 
come to kiss my feet when I am no more. 

Montaigne m 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Some women are so just and discerning that 
they never see an opportunity of being generous. 

Jlnonymous. 

I am glad I am not a man, as I should be 
obliged to marry a woman. 

Mme. de Stael. 

<$£ 

A woman for a general, and the soldiers will be 
women. 

Latin Proverb. 
ft 

Women have tongues of craft and hearts of 
guile. 

Tasso. 

m 

A coquette has no heart; she has only vanity; 
it is adorers she seeks, not love. 

Poincelot. 

Many men kill themselves for love, but many 
more women die of it. 

Lemontey. 

The brain-women never interest us like the 
heart-women; white roses please less than red. 

Holmes. 
8 9 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A woman is seldom roused to great and cou- 
rageous exertion, but when something most dear 
to her is in immediate danger. 

Baillie. 

A man can keep another person's secret better 
than his own; a woman, on the contrary, keeps 
her secret though she tells all others. 

La Bruyere. 

Men speak of what they know; women, of 
what pleases them. 

Rousseau* 

There would be no such animals as prudes or 
coquettes in the world were there not such an 
animal as man. 

Jlddison. 

The reputation of a woman may be compared 
to a mirror, shining and bright, but liable to be 
sullied by every breath that comes near it. 

Cervantes. 

Virtue: a word easy to pronounce, difficult to 
understand. 

Voltaire, 
9° 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Love is the most terrible, and also the most 
generous, of the passions; it is the only one 
which includes in its dreams the happiness of 
some one else. 

Karr. 



Marriage should combat without respite or 
mercy that monster that devours everything — 
habit. 

Balzac. 

It is easy to find a lover and to retain a friend; 
what is difficult is to find the friend and retain 
the lover. 

Levis. 

It's better to love to-day than to-morrow. A 
pleasure postponed is a pleasure lost. 

Ricard. 

Woman conceals only what she does not know. 

Proverb. 

% 

Lady Teazle — I ought to have my own way 
in everything, and what's more I will, too. 

Sheridan. 
91 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A coquette is one that is never to be persuaded 
out of the passion she has to please, nor out of a 
good opinion of her own beauty. 

J&ddison. 

The vows that woman makes to her fond lover 
are only fit to be written on air or on the swiftly 
running stream. 

Catullus. 

m 

When a "lady" walks the streets, she leaves 
her virtuous indignation countenance at home. 

Holmes. 

The humour of affecting a superior carriage 
generally rises from a false notion of the weak- 
ness of the female understanding in general. 

Steele. 

Woman is mistress of the art of completely 
embittering the life of the person on whom she 
depends. 

Goethe. 

A woman submits to the yoke of opinion, but a 
man rebels. 

De Flnod. 
92 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The only thing that has been taught success- 
fully to women is to wear becomingly the fig-leaf 
they received from their first mother. 

Diderot. 

m 

Woman is like the reed that bends to every 
breeze, but breaks not in the tempest. 

Whately. 
% 

Women are happier in the love they inspire 
than in that which they feel; men are just the 
contrary. 

De Beauchene. 

To a susceptible youth, like myself, brought up 
in the country, women are perfect divinities. 

m Irving. 

Women should be careful of their conduct, for 
appearances sometimes injure them as much as 
faults. 

Girard. 

The reason why so few women are touched by 
friendship is that they find it dull when they 
have experienced love. 

La Rochefoucauld. 

93 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Excess of passion and the force of love, — ar- 
guments than which there can be none more 
powerful to assuage the irritation of a woman's 
mind. 

Titus Livius. 

Where women are, the better things are im- 
plied if not spoken. 

Bronson Jklcott. 

For let 'em be clumsy, or let 'em be slim, 
Young or ancient, I care not a feather; 

So fill a pint bumper quite up to the brim, 
And let us e'en toast them together. 

Sheridan. 

To say the truth, I never yet knew a tolerable 
woman to be fond of her own sex. 

Swift. 

Women are wise impromptu, fools on reflec- 
tion. 

Italian Proverb. 

An opinion formed by a woman is inflexible; 
the fact is not half so stubborn. 

Anonymous. 

94 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The materials that go to the making of one 
woman were set free by the abstraction from in- 
animate nature of one man's worth of masculine 
constituents. 

Holmes. 

" I like women/' said a clear-headed man of 
the world, "they are so finished." They finish 
society, manners, language. Form and ceremony 
are their realm. They embellish trifles. 

Emerson. 

There is one thing admirable in women; they 
never reason about their blameworthy actions; 
even in their dissimulation there is an element 
of sincerity. 

Balzac. 

A mother dreads no memories, — those shad- 
ows have all melted away in the dawn of Baby's 
smiles. 

George Eliot, 

% 

Nature has said to woman: Be fair if thou 
canst, be virtuous if thou wilt; but considerate 
thou must be. 

Beaamarchais. 

95 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A woman either loves or hates; she knows no 
medium. 

Syr us. 



The error of certain women is to imagine that, 
to acquire distinction, they must imitate the 
manners of men. 

De Maistre* 

Women's virtue is the music of stringed instru- 
ments, which sound best in a room. 

Richter. 

I dare say she's like the rest of the women, — 
thinks two and two'll come to make five, if she 
cries and bothers enough about it. 

George Eliot. 

Hip. — Women? I never heard of them before, 

what are women like? 
Prosp. — Imagine something between young men 

and angels; 
Fatally beauteous, and having killing eyes; 
Their voices charm beyond the Nightingales; 
They are all enchantment. 

Davenant and Dryden. 

, 96 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

With women the desire to bedeck themselves 
is always the desire to please. 

Marmontel. 

In life, as in a promenade, woman must lean on 
a man above her. 

Karr. 

Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks, 
shall win my love. 

Shakespeare. 

The revolution the Boston boys started had to 
run in mother's milk before it ran in man's blood. 

Holmes. 

How can one who hates men love a woman 
without blushing? 

Richter. 

Women like audacity; when one astounds 
them, he interests them; and when one interests 
them, he is very sure to please them- 

J} no ny mo us. 

A shameless woman is the worst of men. 

Young. 

97 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

There has been no church, however supersti- 
tious, that has not been adorned by many Chris- 
tian women devoting their entire lives to as- 
suaging the sufferings of men. 

We need the friendship of a man in great trials, 
of a woman in the affairs of every-day life. 

Thomas. 

Some women need much adorning, as some 
meat needs much seasoning to incite appetite c 

Rochebrune. 

'Tis beauty that doth make woman proud; 
'Tis virtue that doth make them most admired; 
'Tis government that makes them seem divine. 

Shakespeare. 

Women should despise slander, and fear to 
provoke it. 

Mdlle. de Scuderi. 

Nature is in earnest when she makes a woman. 

Holmes. 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

However virtuous a woman may be, a com- 
pliment on her virtue is what gives her the least 
pleasure. 

Prince de Ligne. 



It is not always for virtue's sake that women 
are virtuous. 

La Rochefoucauld* 

The society of women is the element of good 
manners. 

Goethe, 

n 

If a woman has any malicious mischief to do, 
her memory is immortal. 

Plautus* 

When women have passed thirty, the first 
thing they forget is their age; when they have 
attained the age of forty, they have entirely lost 
the remembrance of it. 

De Lenclos. 

Even if women were immortal, they could 
never foresee their last lover. 

De Lamennais. 

L OF C. 99 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Woman is the Sunday of man. 

Michelet. 

It has been justly observed that heroines are 
best painted in general terms. 

Leigh Hunt. 

Love is superior to genius. 

De Musset. 

Time sooner or later vanquishes love; friend- 
ship alone subdues time. 

D' Jirconvilie. 

A beautiful woman with the qualities of a 
noble man is the most perfect thing in nature; 
we find in her all the merits of both sexes. 

La Bruyere. 

One is alone in a crowd when one suffers, or 
when one loves. 

Rochepedre* 

% 

All the passions die with the years; self-love 
alone never dies. 

Voltaire, 

IOO 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A short absence quickens love, a long absence 
kills it. 

Mirabeau. 

Marriage often unites for life two people who 
scarcely know each other. 

Balzac, 

m 

If a woman refrains from absurd or hateful 
words and acts, and if she is beautiful, we are 
straightway convinced that she is a paragon of 
wisdom and morality. 

Tolstoi. 

m 

If we men require more perfection from women 
than from ourselves, it is doing them honour. 

Johnson. 

How many women since the days of Echo and 
Narcissus have pined themselves into air for the 
love of men who were in love only with them- 
selves* 

Jinna Jameson. 
% 

The castle that parleys and the woman who 
listens are ready to surrender. 

C Proverb. 

IO£ 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Strange that the gods should have given an 
antidote against the venom of savage serpents 
and none against that of a bad woman. 

Euripides, 



Women dress less to be clothed than to be 
adorned. When alone before their mirror they 
think more of men than of themselves. 

Rochebrune. 



The woman we love most is often the woman 
to whom we express it the least. 

De Beauchene. 



Woman's counsel is not worth much, yet he 
that despises it is no wiser than he should be. 

Cervantes, 



Woman is the nervous part of humanity; man 
the muscular. 

Halie. 



O woman, woman! thou art formed to bless 
the heart of restless man. 

Bird. 

102 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Women are often ruined by their sensitiveness 
and saved by their coquetry. 

Mdlle. Jtxais, 



Women are compounds of plain-sewing and 
make-believe — daughters of Sham and Hem. 

Sheldon, 

Finesse has been given to woman to compen- 
sate the force of man. 

De Laclos* 



It is to teach us early how to think and how 
to excite our infantile imagination, that prudent 
nature has given to women so much chit-chat. 

La Bray ere, 

Oh, woman! woman! thou shouldst have a few 
sins of thy own to answer for! Thou art the 
author of such a book of follies in man! 

Lytton. 

m 

Woman's dignity lies in her being unknown; 
her glory in the esteem of her husband; and her 
pleasure in the welfare of her family. 

Rousseau. 
103 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Women are demons who make us enter hell 
through the gates of paradise. 

Jinonymous. 

Men say of woman what pleases them; women 
do with men what pleases them. 

Segur. 

Woman must not belong to herself; she is 
bound to alien destinies. 

Schiller. 

Don't trust your horse in the field, nor your 
wife in your home. 

Russian Proverb. 

Woman has been fed upon flattery until it is 
not strange she hungers for substantial diet, 
whose best sauce is understanding and apprecia- 
tion. 

Browne. 

The life of a woman is a long dissimulation. 
Candour, beauty, freshness, virginity, modesty, — 
a woman has each of these but once. 

La Bretonne. 

104 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

One thing only I believe in a woman — that 
she will not come to life again after she is dead. 

Jinonymous. 

Si 

Men call physicians only when they suffer; 
women when they are only afflicted with ennui. 

Mme, de Genlis. 

Men say more evil of a woman than they think; 
it is the contrary with women toward men. 

Dubay. 

m 

A woman's rank lies in the fulness of her 
womanhood; therein alone she is royal. 

George Eliot, 



Women, priests, and poultry have never enough. 

Proverb. 



Woman often dies for love, as spotless maidens 
have died to live for ever in the pantheon of sen- 
timent. 

Browne, 

Love, that is but an episode in the life of man, 
is the entire story of the life of woman. 

Mme. de Stael. 
ios 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The deceit of priests and the cunning of women 
surpass all else. 

Burger. 

Nothing is better than a good wife; and noth- 
ing is worse than a bad one, who is fond of 
gadding about. 

Hesiod. 

Woman is too soft to hate permanently; even 
if a hundred men have been a grief to her, she 
will still love the hundred and first. 

Kinkel. 

Intellect is to a woman's nature what her skirt 
is to her dress. 

Holmes. 

Without woman man would be rough, rude, 
solitary, and would ignore all the graces, which 
are but the smiles of love. 

Chateaubriand. 

No woman who is absolutely and entirely good, 
in the ordinary sense of the word, gets a man's 
most fervent, passionate love. 

Mrs. IV. K> Clifford. 

1 06 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

It is a misfortune for a woman never to be 
loved, but it is a humiliation to be loved no more. 

Montesquieu. 



Woman is the salvation or the destruction of 
the family. 

Jkmiel. 

An old coquette has all the defects of a young 
one, and none of her charms. 

Dupuy. 

Women, like the plants in the woods, derive 
their softness and tenderness from the shade. 

Landor. 

SSI 

From many a woman's fortune this truth is 
clear as day; that falsely smiling pleasure with 
pain requites us ever. 

Nibelungeniied. 

Half the sorrows of women would be averted 
if they could repress the speech they know to be 
useless, — nay, the speech they have resolved not 
to utter. 

George Eliot. 

107 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Men know that women are an over-match for 
them, and therefore choose the weakest and most 
ignorant. 

Johnson. 

Woman's sensibility lights up, and quivers and 
falls, like the flame of a coal fire. 

Mitchell. 

The weakness of women gives to some men a 
victory that their merit would never gain. 

Jinonymous. 

One should choose a wife with the ears rather 
than with the eyes. 

Proverb, 

Women like brave men exceedingly, but auda- 
cious men still more. 

Le Mesle, 

Coquettes are like hunters who are fond of 
hunting, but do not eat the game. 

Jinonymous. 



There are no pleasures where women are not. 

Marie De Romieu. 

108 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

She is pretty to walk with, 

And witty to talk with, 

And pleasant, too, to think on. 

Suckling. 

Women can rarely be deceived, for they are 
accustomed to deceive. 

Aristophanes. 

Women's tender hearts are much more sus- 
ceptible of good impressions than the minds of 
the other sex. 

Steele. 

Marriage with a good woman is a harbour in 
the tempest; but with a bad woman, it proves a 
tempest in the harbour. 

PetiUSenn. 
K 

A man without religion is to be pitied, but a 
godless woman is a horror above all things. 

Elizabeth Evans. 

Vanity acts like a woman, — they both think 
they lose something when love or praise is ac- 
corded to another. 

Anonymous. 
109 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Cruelly tempted, perplexed and bewildered, 
when passion is stronger than reason, women do 
not think of consequences, but go blindfolded, 
headlong to their ruin. 

Jlmelia E. Barr. 
K 

One woman reads another's character without 
the tedious trouble of deciphering. 

Jonson. 

Women are much more like each other than 
men; they have, in truth, but two passions, — 
vanity and love. 

Chesterfield, 

A jest that makes a virtuous woman only smile, 
often frightens away a prude. 

De Latena. 

How many women are born too finely organ- 
ized in sense and soul for the highway; they 
must walk with feet unshod! 

Holmes. 

Best of comfort and ever welcome to us. — 
Welcome lady. 

Shakespeare. 
1 10 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

If the loving closed heart of a good woman 
were to open before a man, how much controlled 
tenderness, how many veiled sacrifices and dumb 
virtues would he see! 

Richter. 

m 

Most women are better out of their houses 
than in them. 

Tacitus. 

Women are rakes by nature and prudes by 
necessity. 

La Rochefoucauld. 

What means did the devil find out, or what 
instrument did his own subtlety present him, as 
fittest and aptest to work his mischief by? Even 
the unquiet vanity of the woman. 

Sir Walter Raleigh. 

tig 

An obscure mist of sighs exhales out of the 
solitude of women in the nineteenth century. 

Jilger. 

A man is in general better pleased when he has 
a good dinner than when his wife talks Greek. 

Johnson. 
Ill 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

If a woman's young and pretty, I think you 
can see her good looks all the better for her 
being plainly dressed. 

George Eliot, 



A young girl betrays, in a moment, that her 
eyes have been feeding on the face where you 
find them fixed. 

Holmes. 

Vi 

The woman who loves us is only a woman, but 
the woman we love is a celestial being, whose 
defects disappear under the prism through which 
we see her. 

Girardin. 



Woman's love, like lichens on a rock, will still 
grow where even charity can find no soil to 
nurture itself. 

Bovee. 

She is mine own; 
And I as rich in having such a jewel, 
As twenty seas, if all their sands were pearl, 
The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold. 

Shakespeare. 
112 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A woman indeed ventures most, for she hath 
no sanctuary to retire to from an evil husband. 

Jeremy Taylor. 

m 

Better to have never loved, than to have loved 
unhappily, or to have half loved. 

Louise Colet. 

m 

Love makes time pass, and time makes love 
pass. 

Proverb, 

Life is not long enough for a coquette to play 
all her tricks in. 

Jlddison, 

m 

If a fox is cunning, a woman in love is still 
more so. 

4 Proverb. 

m 

Love is the passion of great souls; it makes 
them merit glory, when it does not turn their 
heads. 

De Pompadour* 

m 

The beautiful is always severe. 

Segur. 

"3 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Nothing is so embarrassing as the first tete-a- 
tete, when there is everything to say, unless it 
be the last, when everything has been said. 

Roqueplan. 

All joys do not cause laughter; great pleasures 
are serious; pleasures of love do not make us 
laugh. 

Voltaire* 

Women live only in the emotion that love 
gives. 

Houssaye. 

K 

Friendship between two women is always a 
plot against each other. 

Karr. 

Divert your mistress rather than sigh for her, 

Steele. 

The ever-womanly draws us above. 

Goethe. 

m 

I love men, not because they are men, but be- 
cause they are not women. 

Queen Christina. 

114 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Flow, wine! smile, women! and the universe 
is consoled. 

Ber anger, 

m 

Discretion is more necessary to women than 
eloquence, because they have less trouble to 
speak well than to speak little. 

Du Bosc. 

m 

There is no gown or garment that worse be- 
comes a woman than when she will be wise. 

Luther, 

Love! Love! Eternal enigma! Will not the 
Sphinx that guards thee find an CEdipus to ex- 
plain thee? 

Pyat. 

m 

On great occasions it is almost always women 
who have given the strongest proofs of virtue 
and devotion. 

Montholcn. 

God bless all good women! To their soft 
hands and pitying hearts we must all come at 
last. 

Holmes* 
"5 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Neither education nor reason gives women 
much security against the influence of example. 

Johnson. 



The hell for women who are only handsome is 
old age. 

Saint- Evremondc 
% 

Men are women's playthings, women are the 
devil's. 

Victor Hugo, 

m 

A woman, if she is bent on ill, never goes 
begging to the gardener for material; she has 
a garden at home. 

Plautus, 

The woman in us still prosecutes a deceit like 
that begun in the garden; and our understand- 
ings are wedded to an Eve as fatal as the mother 
of their miseries. 

Glanvill. 

m 

Among all animals, from man to the dog, the 
heart of a mother is always a sublime thing. 

Dumas. 

116 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

There are no ugly women; there are only 
women who do not know how to look pretty. 

Berryer. 



It is not for good women that men have fought 
battles, given their lives, and staked their souls. 

Mrs. W. K- Clifford. 



Women's sympathies give a tone, like the harp 
of ^olus to the slightest breath. 

Mitchell. 

% 

A coquette is a woman who places her honour 
in a lottery; ninety-nine chances to one that she 
will lose it. 

Jinonymous. 

The honour of woman is badly guarded when 
it is guarded by keys and spies. No woman is 
honest who does not wish to be. 

Dupuy. 

The man that lays his hand upon a woman, 
save in the way of kindness, is a wretch whom 
'twere gross flattery to name a coward. 

Tobitl* 

117 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Beauty deceives women in making them estab- 
lish on an ephemeral power the pretensions of a 
whole life. 

De Bigincourt. 

Si 

I do not know that she was virtuous; but she 
was ugly, and with a woman that is half the 
battle. 

Heine, 

Love works miracles every day; such as weak- 
ening the strong and strengthening the weak; 
making fools of the wise, and wise men of fools; 
favouring the passions, destroying reason, and, in 
a word, turning everything topsyturvy. 

Marguerite de Valois. 

In love, as in everything else, experience is a 
physician who never comes until after the dis- 
order is cured. 

De la Tour, 

May widows wed as often as they can, 
And ever for the better change their man; 
And some devouring plague pursue their lives, 
Who will not well be govern'd by their wives. 

Dryden* 

118 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Were we perfectly acquainted with our idol, 
we should never passionately desire it. 

La Rochefoucauld, 

Love is like the moon; when it does not in- 
crease, it decreases. 

Segur. 

m 

As soon as women are ours, we are no longer 
theirs. 

Montaigne. 

A woman laughs when she can, and weeps 
when she will. 

Proverb. 

A woman that is ill-treated has no refuge in 
her griefs but in silence and secrecy. 

Steele. 

A bachelor seeks a wife to avoid solitude; a 
married man seeks society to avoid a tete-a-tete. 

Varennes. 

m 

Silence and blushing are the eloquence of 
women. 

Chinese Proverb. 
IIO 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A woman who has not seen her lover for the 
whole day considers that day lost to her; the 
tenderest of men consider it only lost for love. 

Madame de Saint. 

% 

Woman may complain to God, as subjects do 
of tyrant princes; but otherwise she hath no 
appeal in the causes of unkindness. 

Jeremy Taylor. 

There are only two good women in the world; 
one of them is dead, and the other is not to be 
found. 

German Proverb. 

The most beautiful object in the world, it will 
be allowed, is a beautiful woman. 

Macaulay. 

No woman can be handsome by the force of 
features alone, any more than she can be witty 
only by the help of speech. 

Hughes. 

K 

Every pretty girl one sees is a reminiscence of 
the Garden of Eden. 

Sheldon. 

1 20 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The Marys who bring ointment for our feet 
get but little thanks. 

Thackeray. 

We censure the inconstancy of women when 
we are the victims; we find it charming when we 
are the objects. 

Desnoyers. 

The purer the golden vessel the more readily 
is it bent; the higher worth of women is sooner 
lost than that of men. 

Richter. 

Nature has given beauty to women which can 
resist shields and spears. She who is beautiful is 
stronger than iron and flame. 

Jinacreon. 

% 

The heart of true womanhood knows where its 
own sphere is, and never seeks to stray beyond it. 

Hawthorne* 

K 

Millions of people, generations of slaves, perish 
in this penal servitude of the factories merely in 
order to satisfy the whim of woman. 

Tolstoi. 

121 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A woman of sense ought to be above flattering 
any man. 

Holmes. 



The reason why so few marriages are happy is 
because young ladies spend their time making 
nets, not cages. 

Jinonymous. 

yg 

Woman knows that the better she obeys the 
surer she is to rule. 

Michetet. 

I have found that there is an intimate con- 
nection between the character of women and the 
fancy that makes them choose such and such 
material. 

Merim.ee. 

Woman is the most perfect when the most 
womanly. 

Gladstone. 

m 

The most reasonable women have hours 
wherein to be unreasonable. 

Cherbuliex. 

122 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Woman is at once apple and serpent. 

Heine. 

One must have loved a woman of genius in 
order to comprehend what happiness there is in 
loving a fool. 

Talleyrand, 

m 

The love of a bad woman kills others; the love 
of a good and noble woman kills herself. 

George Sand, 

m 

Woman is born for love, and it is impossible 
to turn her from seeking it. 

Ossoli. 

Man sometimes asks of a book the truth; a 
woman always her illusions. 

Goncourt, 

Societies commence with polygamy and finish 
with polyandry. 

Goncourt, 

In a truly loving heart either jealousy kills love 
or love kills jealousy. 

Bourget. 
123 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

It is not the treachery of women, but our own, 
which makes us beware of them. 

B our get. 

The world either breaks or hardens the heart. 

Cham fort. 

A mother's tenderness and caresses are the 
milk of the heart. 

De Guerin. 

Great vices, and great virtues, are exceptions in 
mankind. 

tfapoleon I. 
% 

Most women caress sin before embracing peni- 
tence. 

DuroissFontanelle. 
% 

Elegance of appearance, ornaments, and dress, 
these are women's badges of distinction; in 
these they delight and glory. 

Titus Livius. 

Woman is a creature between man and the 
angels. 

Balzac. 

124 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Education raises many poor women to a stage 
of refinement that makes them suitable com- 
panions for men of a higher rank, and not suit- 
able for those of their own. 

Lecky, 

When Eve ate the apple she knew she was 
naked. I have often thought, as I looked at her 
dancing daughters, that another bite would be of 
service to them. 

Sheldon. 

Men who paint sylphs, fall in love with some 
bonne et brave femme, Iieavy-heeled and freckled. 

George Eliot, 

Of an ancient love one may make everything, 
even a new love — everything, except friendship. 

Bourget. 

Love is a religion and its cult must cost more 
than that of all the other religions. 

Bourget. 

There are no oaths that make so many per- 
jurers as the vows of love. 

Rochebrune. 

125 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The heart makes of woman a sublime being, 
the senses in their brutality make of her a true 
being. 

B our get, 

% 

It is neither honour nor love which makes a 
betrayed man think of killing a woman. Murder 
comes of the senses. 

Bourget, 

But, O, ye lords of ladies intellectual! 
Inform us truly, have they not henpecked you 
all? 

Byron* 

Woman — the gods be thanked! — is not even 
collaterally related to that sentimental abstrac- 
tion called an angel. 

Browne. 

m 

One blushes oftener from the wounds of self- 
love than from modesty. 

Guibert. 

When the intoxication of love has passed, we 
laugh at the perfections it had discovered. 

De Lenclos. 
126 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The passions are the orators of great assem- 
blies. 

Rivarol. 

Every one speaks well of his heart, but no one 
dares to speak well of his mind. 

La Rochefoucauld 

There are people who are almost in love, al- 
most famous, and almost happy. 

De t^rudener. 



Women are an aristocracy. 

Michelet. 



Women are too imaginative and sensitive to 
have much logic. 

Mme. du Deffand. 

The man who lives in indifference is one who 
has never seen the woman he could love. 

La Bruyere. 

m 

I wish Adam had died with all his ribs in his 
body. 

Bouclcault, 
127 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

One mother is more venerable than a thousand 
fathers. 

Laws of Manu. 



Tell a woman that she is beautiful, and the 
devil will repeat it to her ten times. 

Italian Proverb, 

A woman is most merciless when shame goads 
on her hate. 

Juvenal, 

% 

God made her small in order to do a more 
choice bit of workmanship. 

De M asset. 

The venom of the female viper is more poison- 
ous than that of the male viper. 

Butter. 

Friendships of women are cushions wherein 
they stick their pins. 

J2 no ny mo us. 



Women rouge that they may not blush. 

Italian Proverb* 

128 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A woman in love is a very poor judge of char- 
acter. 

Holland. 

There was never yet fair woman but she made 
mouths in a glass. 

Shakespeare, 

in 

A woman's whole life is the history of the 
affections. The heart is her world; it is there 
her ambition strives for empire. 

Irving. 

Women never lie more astutely than when 
they tell the truth to those who do not believe 
them. 

Jinonymous. 

A woman's friendship borders more closely on 
love than man's. 

Coleridge. 

Beauty, in a modest woman, is like fire or a 
sharp sword at a distance: neither doth the one 
burn nor the other wound those that come not 
too near them. 

Cervantes* 
129 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Women never weep more bitterly than when 
they weep with spite. 

Ricard. 



To love her is a liberal education. 

Congreve. 

K 

Irregular vivacity of temper leads astray the 
hearts of ordinary women in the choice of their 
lovers and the treatment of their husbands. 

Jiddison. 

M 

The only confidence that one can repose in the 
most discreet woman is the confidence of her 
beauty. 

Le Meste. 

$i 

A knot of ladies got together by themselves is 
a very school of impertinence and detraction, and 
it is well if those be the worst. 

Swift. 

Never say man, but men; nor women, but 
woman; for the world has thousands of men 
and only one woman. 

Weiss. 
130 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

It is to woman that the heart appeals when it 
needs consolation. 

Demoustier. 

mi 

A woman without beauty knows but half of 
life. 

Mme, de Montaran. 

But one thing on earth is better than the wife 
— that is the mother. 

Schefer. 

A virtuous woman has in the heart a fibre less 
or a fibre more than other women; she is stupid 
or sublime. 

Balzac. 

In every loving woman there is a priestess of 
the past. 

Jimiel. 

% 

All women are good — good for nothing, or 
good for something. 

Cervantes. 

>£§ 
What woman desires is written in heaven. 

La Chaussee* 
131 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Women are a new race, re-created since the 
world received Christianity. 

Beecher. 



Woman is the highest, holiest, most precious 
gift to man. Her mission and throne is the 
family. 

Todd. 

Of all heavy bodies, the heaviest is the woman 
we have ceased to love. 

Lemontey. 

If a wife can induce herself to submit patiently 
to her husband's mode of life, she will have no 
difficulty to manage him. 

Jirlstotle. 

Men would be saints if they loved God as they 
love women. 

St. Thomas. 

Women and young men are apt to tell what 
secrets they know from the vanity of having 
been trusted. 

Chesterfield. 
132 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Than woman there is no fouler and viler fiend 
when her mind is bent on ill. 

Homer, 

% 

A woman forgives everything but the fact that 
you do not covet her. 

De M asset. 

What will not woman, gentle woman, dare? 

Southey, 

Of all things that man possesses, women alone 
take pleasure in being possessed. 

Mather be. 

m 

Women are like pictures; of no value in the 
hands of a fool, till he hears men of sense bid 
high for the purchase. 

Farquhar. 

The best woman is the one least talked about. 

Schiller. 

m 

In this advanced century a girl of sixteen 
knows as much as her mother, and enjoys her 
knowledge much more. 

Jtnonymousm 
133 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

In love, a woman is like a lyre that surrenders 
its secrets only to the hand that knows how to 
touch its strings. 

Balzac* 

Men say knowledge is power; women think 
dress is power. 

Sheldon. 

She is the most virtuous woman whom Nature 
has made the most voluptuous, and reason the 
coldest. 

La Beaumelle. 

For one woman who affronts her kind by 
wicked passions or remorseless hate, a thousand 
make amends in age and youth. 

Mackay. 

It is often woman who inspires us with the 
great things that she will prevent us from accom- 
plishing. 

Dumas. 

Between a woman's "yes" and "no" I would 
not venture to stick a pin. 

Cervantes. 

*34 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A man who is known to have broken many 
hearts is naturally invested with a tantalizing 
charm to women who have yet hearts to be 
broken. 

Boyesen. 

A woman's love is often a misfortune; her 
friendship is always a boon. 

Afezieres. 

A woman's head is always influenced by her 
heart, but a man's heart is always influenced by 
his head. 

Blessington. 

K 

Women love always; when earth slips away 
from them they take refuge in heaven. 

Jinonymous. 

The finger of the first woman loved is like that 
of God: the imprint of it is eternal. 

Jinonymous. 

Most women prefer that we should talk ill of 
their virtue rather than of their wit or of their 
beauty. 

Fontenelle. 

"35 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

In buying horses and in taking a wife, shut 
your eyes tight and commend yourself to God. 

Tuscan Proverb. 

m 

All women desire to be esteemed; they care 
much less about being respected. 

Dumas. 

Women are women but to become mothers: 
they go to duty through pleasure. 

Joubert. 

Coquetry is a net laid by the vanity of women 
to ensnare that of man. 

Bruin. 

n 

To a woman of delicate feeling, the most per- 
suasive declaration of love is the embarrassment 
of an intellectual man. 

De Latena. 

A coquette is to a man what a toy is to a child; 
as long as it pleases him he keeps it. 

Anonymous. 

A pretty woman's worth some pains to see. 

Browning. 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

When a woman once begins to be ashamed of 
what she ought not to be ashamed of, she will 
not be ashamed of what she ought. 

Titus Livius. 

m 

Friend, beware of fair maidens! When their 
tenderness begins, our servitude is near. 

Hugo. 

m 

That perfect disinterestedness and self-devo- 
tion of which man seems incapable, but which is 
sometimes found in women. 

Macaulay. 

m 

If you wish a coquette to regard you, cease to 
regard her. 

Anonymous. 

m 

Women of forty always fancy they have found 
the Fountain of Youth, and that they remain 
young in the midst of the ruins of their day, 

Houssaye. 

m 

In mythology no god falls in love with Mi- 
nerva. A mannish woman only attracts a fem- 
inine man. 

Sheldon, 
137 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The perfect loveliness of a woman's coun- 
tenance can only consist in that majestic peace 
which is founded in the memory of happy and 
useful years, full of sweet records. 

Raskin, 

Trust your dog to the end; a woman — till the 
first opportunity. 

Proverb, 

Women have the same desires as men, but do 
not have the same right to express them. 

Rousseau. 

yg 

Youth feeds on its own flowery pastures; in 
pleasures it builds up a life that knows no trouble 
till the name of virgin is lost in that of wife. 

Sophocles, 

The world is so unjust that a female heart 
which has once been touched is thought for ever 
blemished. 

Steele. 

There is something still more to be studied 
than a Jesuit, and that is a Jesuitess. 

Eugene Sue„ 

133 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Nature and custom would, no doubt, agree in 
conceding to all males the right of at least two 
distinct looks at every comely female coun- 
tenance. 

Holmes. 

. n 

We love handsome women from inclination, 
homely women from interest, and virtuous 
women from reason. 

Houssaye. 

Uneducated men may escape intellectual degra- 
dation; uneducated women cannot. 

Sydney Smith, 

A woman and her servant, acting in accord, 
would outwit a dozen devils. 

Proverb. 

Cast in so slight and exquisite a mould, so mild 
and gentle, so pure and beautiful, that earth 
seemed not her element, nor its rough creatures 
her fit companions. 

Dickens. 

A light wife doth make a heavy husband. 

Shakespeare. 

1 39 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The wife is a constellation of virtues; she's 
the moon, and thou art the man in the moon. 

Congreve. 

Certain importunities always please women, 
even when the importuner does not please. 

Mnonymous. 

m 

Trust a poor woman to dress her children in 
finery. 

Mitchell. 

A woman is turned into a love-magnet by a 
tingling current of life running around her. 

Holmes. 

V£ 

Women and maidens must be praised, whether 
truly or falsely. 

German Proverb. 

The supreme beauty of Greek art is rather 
male than female. 

IVlnckeltnann. 

The man is the head of the woman, but she 
rules him by her temper. 

Russian Proverb, 

140 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Women are in general more addicted to the 
petty forms of vanity, jealousy, spitefulness, and 
ambition, and they are also inferior to men in 
active courage. 

Lecky. 
% . 

Scylla must have broken off many excellent 
matches in her time, if she insisted upon all that 
loved her loving her dogs also. 

Lamb. 

It is difficult for a woman ever to try to be 
anything good when she is not believed in,— 
when it is always supposed that she must be 
contemptible. 

George Eliot* 

Woman's beauty, the forest's echo, and rain- 
bows soon pass away. 

German Proverb. 

m 

The starry crown of woman is in the power of 
her affection and sentiment and the infinite en- 
largements to which they lead. 

Emerson. 

m 

He that hath a fair wife never wants trouble. 

Proverb, 
141 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

However much a woman may need deliverance 
from such outward trials and disabilities, her 
grand want is a freer, deeper, richer, holier in- 
ward life. 

Jilger. 
s 

The man who awakes the wondering, trembling 
passion of a young girl always thinks her affec- 
tionate. 

George Eliot, 

<£§ 

A woman, unlike Narcissus, seeks not her own 
image and a second I; she much prefers a not I. 

Reenter. 

m 

Woman is seldom merciful to the man who is 
timid. 

Lytton. 
% 

A wife! a mother! two magical words, com- 
prising the sweetest source of man's felicity. 
Theirs is the reign of beauty, of love, of reason, 
— always a reign. 

Jiimi Martin, 

% 

Devotion is the last love of women. 

Saint* Evremond. 
142 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Woman is the dwelling-place of religion, and 
communicates it to the young. 

Charming* 

The first and chief thing that should be looked 
for in a woman is fear. 

Tolstoi. 

m 

A woman fascinates a man quite as often by 
what she overlooks as by what she sees. 

Holmes. 

Si 

Women have no fear of marriage, because they 
are so occupied in imagining the happiness it 
may bring them that they never think of the pos- 
sible misery it includes. 

Jinonymous. 

m 

The woman who plays with the love of a loyal 
man is a curse; she may close his heart for ever 
against all confidence in her sex. 

Jlnonymous. 

The beauty of some women has days and 
seasons, and depends upon accidents which 
diminish or increase it. 

Cervantes. 
143 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

We meet in society many attractive women 
whom we would fear to make our wives. 

D'Harleville. 
K 

A woman with whom one discusses love is 
always in expectation of something. 

Poincelot. 

It is the male that gives charm to womankind, 
that produces an air in their faces, a grace in 
their motions, a softness in their voices, and a 
delicacy in their complexions. 

Jlddison. 

In life, woman must wait until she is asked to 
love, as in a salon she waits for an invitation to 
dance. 

A sharp eye can almost always see the train 
leading from a young girFs eye or lip to the " I 
love you" in her heart. 

Holmes. 

A woman without a laugh in her ... is the 
greatest bore in nature. 

Thackeray. 

144 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Women, wind, and fortune soon change. 

Spanish Proverb. 

To women, mildness is the best means to be 
right. 

Mme. de Fontaines, 

Women bestow on friendship only what they 
borrow from love. 

Chamfort, 

m 

The best shelter for a girl is her mother's wing. 

Anonymous. 

m 

Whoever, allured by riches or high rank, mar- 
ries a vicious woman is a fool. 

Euripides. 

For a woman to be at once a coquette and a 
bigot is more than the meekest of husbands can 
bear. 

La Bray ere* 

Love is of all the passions the strongest, for it 
attacks simultaneously the head, the heart, and 
the senses. 

Voltaire. 

H5 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A wretched woman is more unfortunate than a 
wretched man. 

Victor Hugo, 

K 

A good woman is a hidden treasure; who dis- 
covers her will do well not to boast about it. 

La Rochefoucauld, 

Women are twice as religious as men; all the 
world knows that. 

Holmes. 

The most dreadful thing against women is the 
character of the men who praise them. 

Anonymous, 

The future of society is in the hands of the 
mothers. If the world was lost through woman, 
she alone can save it. 

De Beaufort, 

Love thy wife as thy soul; shake her as a 
plum-tree. 

Russian Proverb* * 

Time is the sovereign physician of all passions. 

Montaigne. 

1 46 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A woman is naturally as much more capricious 
than a man as she is more susceptible. A slighter 
shock suffices to jostle her delicate emotions out 
of delight into disgust. 

Jtlger. 
% 

Obstacles usually stimulate passion, but some- 
times they kill it. 

Sand, 

Folly was condemned to serve as a guide to 
Love whom she had blinded. 

La Fontaine. 

% 

The breaking of a heart leaves no traces. 

Sand, 

m 

From the moment it is touched, the heart can- 
not dry up. 

Bourdaloue. 

'Tis the greatest misfortune in nature for a 
woman to want a confidant. 

Farquhar. 

A woman's fame is the tomb of her happiness. 

Proverb* 
147 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

How many women would laugh at the funerals 
of their husbands if it were not the custom to 
weep. 

Jlnonymous 

Venus with ease engenders wiles in knowing 
dames; but a woman of simple capacity, by rea- 
son of her small understanding, is removed from 
folly. 

Euripides, 

v§ 

Modesty in women has great advantages; it 
enhances beauty, and serves as a veil to uncome- 
liness. 

Fontenelle, 

Of all wild beasts, on earth or in the sea, the 
greatest is a woman. 

Jinonymous. 

One must tell women only what one wants to 
be known. 

Beaumarchais. 

m 

A woman once fallen will shrink from no 
impropriety. 

Tacitus* 

148 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Speak to women in a style and manner proper 
to approach them, they never fail to improve by 
your counsels. 

Steele. 



A woman without religion is even worse, a 
flame without heat, a rainbow without colour, a 
flower without perfume. 

Mitchell. 

n 

I don't want a woman to weigh me in a 
balance; there are men enough for that sort of 
work. 

Holmes. 

Women soften our character, and yet make us 
heroic. The same traits of character produce 
these different effects. 

C harming. 

n 

Women, like empresses, condemn to imprison- 
ment and hard labour nine-tenths of mankind. 

Tolstoi. 

n 

Coquette — a female general who builds her 
fame on her advances. 

Field. 
149 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

There is one dangerous science for women, one 
which let them indeed beware how they pro- 
fanely touch; that of theology. 

Raskin. 

V§ 

There will be so many more women in heaven 
than men that any marriage, except of the Mor- 
mon kind, would be impossible. 

Sheldon. 

When, like spoiled children, women cry for the 
moon, it is because they have heard that the 
moon contains a man. 

Browne. 

m 

Women famed for their valour, their skill in 
politics, or their learning, leave the duties of their 
own sex in order to invade the privileges of ours. 

Goldsmith. 

Women in this degenerate age are rare, to 
whom aught else but sordid gain is dear. 

Jtriosto. 

Woman, divorced from home, wanders un- 
friended like a waif upon the waves. 

Goethe. 
150 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone; 
man only knows man's insensibility to a new 
gown, 

Jane Jtusten. 

Women are right to crave beauty at any price, 
since beauty is the only merit that men do not 
contest with them. 

Dupuy. 

Your true flirt plays with sparkles; her heart, 
much as there is of it, spends itself in sparkles; 
she measures it to sparkle, and habit grows into 
nature. 

Mitchell, 

The prejudices of men emanate from the mind, 
and may be overcome; the prejudices of women 
emanate from the heart, and are impregnable. 

Boyer d' Jtrgens, 

Women are the poetry of the world in the 
same sense as the stars are the poetry of heaven. 

Ha.rgra.ve. 
% 

Her step is music and her voice is song. 

Bailey. 

151 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The pleasure of talking is the inextinguishable 
passion of women, coeval with the act of breath- 
ing. 

Lesage. 

N£ 

Women of the world never use harsh expres- 
sions when condemning their rivals. 

Jtnonymous* 

Women are, for the most part, good or bad, as 
they fall amongst those who practise virtue or 
vice. 

Johnson* 

Confound the make-believe women we have 
turned loose in cur streets. 

Holmes. 

m 

Women are like thermometers, which, on a 
sudden application of heat, sink at first a few 
degrees, as preliminary to rising a good many. 

Richter. 

j To say "Every one is talking about him" is a 
\Weulogy; but to say " Every one is talking about 
her" is an elegy. 

Jtnonymous. 

i5« 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A delicate woman is the best instrument; she 
has such a magnificent compass of sensibilities. 

Holmes. 

m 

Women exceed the generality of men in love, 

La Bruyere, 

Curiosity is one of the forms of feminine 
bravery- 

Victor Hugo, 

It is easier to take care of a peck of fleas than 
of one woman. 

Proverb, 

Women commend a modest man, and like him 
not. 

Proverb, 

Until we know woman, we know not strength 
of love. In this we have, perhaps, the best em- 
blem of omnipotence as well as divine goodness. 

Charming, 

Man carves his destiny; woman is helped to 
hers. 

Julia Ward Howe, 

153 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

A coquette sparkles, but it is more the sparkle 
of a harmless and pretty vanity than of calcula- 
tion. 

* Mitchell. 



Women never truly command till they have 
given their promise to obey; and they are never 
in more danger of being made slaves than when 
the men are at their feet. 

Farquhar. 

Women are apt to love the men who they think 
have the largest capacity of loving. 

Holmes • 

There are few women whose charms survive 
their beauty. 

La Rochefoucauld. 

% 

A woman despises a man for loving her unless 
she happens to return his love. 

Elizabeth Stoddard. 

Beauty is the first gift Nature gives to woman, 
and the first she takes from her. 

De Mere. 

'54 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Women must have their wills while they live, 
because they make none when they die. 

Proverb. 



A woman who is guided by the head, and not 
by the heart, is a social pestilence. 

Balzac. 

If the women did not make idols of us, and if 
they saw us as we see each other, would life be 
bearable or could society go on? 

Thackeray. 

A woman who has surrendered her lips has 
surrendered everything. 

Viaud. 

m 

A woman repents sincerely of her fault only 
after being weaned from her infatuation for the 
one who induced her to commit it. 

De Latena, 

Let the great soul incarnated in some woman's 
form, poor and sad and single, in some Dolly or 
Joan, go out to service. 

Emerson. 

i5S 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

An asp would render its sting more venomous 
by dipping it into the heart of a coquette. 

Poincelot. 



Voluptuaries know what they talk about when 
they profess not to care for sense in woman. 

Leigh Hunt, 

Woman, naturally enthusiastic of the good and 
beautiful, sanctifies all that she surrounds with 
her affection. 

Mercier, 

% 

Women have more understanding than we 
have, and women of spirit are not to be won by 
mourners. 

Steele, 

m 

Marry a virgin, that thou mayst teach her dis- 
creet manners. 

Hesiod. 

Pretty women gaze at a beauty with envy, 
homely women with spite, old men with regret, 
young men with transport. 

D' Jlrgens. 

156 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Hell is paved with women's tongues. 

Jibbe Guyon. 

A woman is more influenced by what she 
divines than by what she is told. 

De Lenclos, 



We never fall in love with a woman, in distinc- 
tion from women, until we can get an image of 
her through a pinhole. 

Holmes. 

m 

However talkative a woman may be, love 
teaches her silence. 

Rochebrune. 

<#£ 

There is something so gross in the carriage of 
some wives that they lose their husbands' hearts. 

Budgell. 

Virtue, with some women, is but the precaution 
of locking doors. 

Lemonley. 

m 

The heart of a loving woman is a golden sanc- 
tuary, where often there reigns an idol of clay. 

Limayrae. 
157 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Men declare their love before they feel it; 
women confess theirs only after they have 
proved it. 

De Latena. 

m 

In love it is only the commencement that 
charms. I am not surprised that one finds 
pleasure in frequently recommencing. 

Prince de Ligne* 

Women call repentance the sweet remembrance 
of their faults and the bitter regret of their in- 
ability to recommence them. 

Beaumanoir. 

She had married her husband for his wit, and 
was willing to do the next best thing for any man 
who was wittier. 

Francis Prevost. 

ft 

Women are often ruined by their sensitiveness 
and saved by their coquetry. 

Mdlte* Jizais. 

m 

In love only the awkward are punished — like 
the Spartan thieves. 

Anonymous. 

158 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

The action of woman on our destiny is unceas- 
ing. 

Lord Be aeons field, 

m 

The weaknesses of women have been given 
them by nature to exercise the virtues of men. 

Mme* Meeker, 

The most chaste woman may be the most 
voluptuous, if she loves. 

Mirabeau. 

Love renders chaste the most voluptuous 
pleasures. 

Virey, 

Manners, morals, customs change: the pas- 
sions are always the same. 

Mme* de Ftahaut. 

n 

Discretion is more necessary to women than 
eloquence. 

Da Bosc. 

Marriage is a lottery in which men stake their 
liberty, and women their happiness. 

Mme» de Rieux* 
iS9 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Orpheus went to Hell to find his wife: how 
many widowers would not even go to Heaven to 
find theirs? 

PetiUSenn, 



When a lover gives, he demands — and much 
more than he has given. 

Parny, 

A reputation for success has as much influence 
with women as a reputation for wealth has with 
men. 

Lord Be aeons field. 

Women give themselves to God when the Devil 
wants nothing more to do with them. 

Sophie Jtrnould. 

The beauty of a young girl should speak to the 
imagination, and not to the senses. 

Karr. 

m 

The quarrels of lovers are like summer showers 
that leave the country more verdant and beau- 
tiful. 

At me, Necker, 
160 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Prudery is the hypocrisy of modesty. 

Matsias. 



Women distrust men too much in general, and 
not enough in particular. 

Commerson. 

There is a magic in Duty which sustains 
judges, inflames warriors, and cools the married. 

Dupuy. 

in 

There are beautiful flowers that are scentless, 
and beautiful women that are unlovable. 

Hove lie. 

Love is a beggar who still begs when one has 
given him everything. 

Rochepedre, 

<$£ 

The desire to please is born in woman before 
the desire to love. 

De Lenclos. 

A prude ought to be condemned to meet only 
indiscreet lovers. 

Raisson. 

161 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Science seldom renders men amiable; women 
never. 

De Beauchene. 

®§ 

Women are in the moral world what flowers 
are in the physical. 

Marechat. 

Who loves not women, wine, and song, remains 
a fool his whole life long. 

Martin Luther* 

m 

Virtue and Love are two ogres: one must eat 
the other. 

D*Houdetot. 
% 

Love never dies of starvation, but often of 
indigestion. 

De Lenclos, 

m 

A woman with whom one discusses love is 
always in expectation of something. 

Poincelot, 

The society of women endangers men's morals 
and refines their manners. 

Montesquieu* 

162 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Women swallow at one mouthful the lie that 
flatters, and drink drop by drop a truth that is 
bitter. 

Diderot. 

m 

Love pleases more than marriage, for the rea- 
son that romance is more interesting than his- 
tory. 

Chamfort. 

Fortune hath somewhat of the nature of a 
woman, who, if she be too closely wooed, is 
commonly the further off. 

Charles V. 

Till we are built like angels, with hammer, and 

chisel, and pen, 
We will work for ourselves and a woman, for 

ever and ever, Amen. 

Kipling. 

One is always a woman's first lover. 

De Laclos. 

m 

Even if women were immortal, they could 
never foresee their last lover. 

Lammenais. 

163 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Devotion is the last love of women. 

St. Evremond. 

Love, that sometimes corrupts pure bodies, 
often purifies corrupt hearts. 

Latent*. 

in 

Coquetry is a continual lie, which renders a 
woman more contemptible and more dangerous 
than a courtesan who never lies. 

De Uarennes. 

m 

Marriage is often but ennui for two. 

Commerson. 

Love that seldom gives us happiness, at least 
makes us dream of it. 

Senancourt. 

m 

Woman is the most precious jewel taken from 
Nature's casket for the ornamentation and happi- 
ness of man. 

Guyard. 

Marriage is a feast where the grace is some- 
times better than the dinner. 

Lacon, 
164 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Love is like medical science — the art of assist- 
ing Nature. 

Laltemand* 

To continue love in marriage is a science. 

Mme. Reyband, 

m 

The mistake of many women is to return senti- 
ment for gallantry. 

Jo aye 

It is not love that ruins us; it is the way we 
make it. 

B ussy s Rah at in. 

And whether coldness, pride, or virtue, dignify 
A woman; so she's good, what does it signify? 

Byron, 

A. coquette often loses her reputation while she 
possesses her virtue. 

Spectator, 

m 

A lover is a man who endeavours to be more 
amiable than it is possible for him to be: this is 
the reason why almost all lovers are ridiculous. 

Chamfort, 

165 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Those who always speak well of women do not 
know them enough; those who always speak ill 
of them do not know them at all, 

PigauluLebrun. 



Possession is the touchstone of love. 

Pan age. 



It is a terrible thing to be obliged to love by 
contract. 

Bussy-Rabutln. 



Our strong passions break into a thousand 
purposes; women have one. 

Lord Beaconsfield. 



Women alone can organize a drawing-room: 
man succeeds sometimes in a library. 

Lord Beaconsfield* 



Where there are crowned heads there are al- 
ways some charming women. 

Lord Beaconsfield, 
166 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Male firmness is very often obstinacy. Women 
have always something better, worth all qualities. 
They have tact. 

Lord Beaconsjield. 

The woman who is talked about is generally 
virtuous, and she is only abused because she 
devotes to one the charms which all wish to 
enjoy. 

Lord, Beaconsjletd, 

m 

There is no mortification, however keen, no 
misery, however desperate, which the spirit of 
woman cannot in some degree lighten or allevi- 
ate. 

Lord Beaconsfietd. 

m 

Earth's noblest thing, a woman perfected. 

Lowell. 



The affections are the children of ignorance; 
when the horizon of our experience expands, and 
models multiply, love and admiration impercept- 
ibly vanish. 

Lord Beaconsfield* 

167 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

There is nothing a man of good sense dreads 
in a wife so much as her having more sense than 
himself. 

Fielding. 

It is only a woman that can make a man be- 
come the parody of himself. 

French Proverb. 



She's beautiful; and therefore to be woo'd: 
She is a woman; therefore to be won. 

Shakespeare. 



And yet believe me, good as well as ill, 
Woman's at best a contradiction still. 
Heaven, when it strives to polish all it can 
Its last best work, but forms a softer man. 

"Pope. 



Where is the man who has the power and skill 
To stem the torrent of a woman's will? 
For if she will, she will, you may depend on't; 
And if she won't, she won't; *so there's an end 

on't. 
From a Pillar in the Dane John Field, Canterbury* 
168 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Honour to women! to them it is given 

To garden the earth with the roses of Heaven. 

Schiller. 



The world well tried — the sweetest thing in life 
Is the unclouded welcome of a wife. 

Willis. 

$g 

Where women are, the better things are im- 
plied if not spoken. 

J}> Bronson Jllcott. 

"Widders, Sammy," replied Mr. Weller, 
slightly changing colour, "widders are 'ceptions 
to ev'ry rule. I have heerd how many ord'nary 
women one widder's equal to, in p'int o' comin' 
over you. I think it's five and twenty, but I 
don't rightly know vether it ain't more." 

Dickens. 

% 

You cannot hammer a girl into anything. She 
grows as a flower does, — she will wither without 
sun; she will decay in her sheath as a narcissus 
will if you do not give her air enough; she may 
fall and defile her head in dust if you leave her 
without help at some moments of her life; but 
169 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

you cannot fetter her; she must take her own 
fair form and way if she take any, and in mind 
as in body must have always — 

"Her household motions light and free, 
And steps of virgin liberty." 

Raskin. 



Nature intended that woman should be her 
masterpiece. 

Lessing. 

When a man does good work out of all pro- 
portion to his pay, in seven cases out of nine 
there is a woman at the back of the virtue. 

Kipling. 

Great women belong to history and to self- 
sacrifice. 

Leigh Hunt, 

Women forgive injuries, but never forget 
slights. 

Thomas C. Haliburton. 

Nature is in earnest when she makes a woman. 

Holmes. 

170 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Women wish to be loved without a why or a 
wherefore; not because they are pretty, or good, 
or well-bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but be- 
cause they are themselves. 

J&miet. 



If there be any one whose power is in beauty, 
in purity, in goodness, it is a woman. 

Beecher, 



It is always best to allow a woman to do as 
she likes if you can, and it saves a good deal of 
bother. To have what she desired is generally 
an effective punishment. 

Grafin von Jirnim. 



When maidens sue 
Men give like gods; but when they weep and 

kneel, 
All their petitions are as freely theirs 
As they themselves would have them. 

Shakespeare, 



The proper study of mankind is woman. 

Coventry Patmore* 
171 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

Ah me! how weak a thing 
The heart of woman is! 

Sha kespeare. 

m 

Upon her wit doth earthly honour wait, 

And virtue stoops and trembles at her frown. 

Shakespeare. 

Woman is a creature without reason, who 
pokes the fire from the top. 

Archbishop WhateJey. 

Would you hurt a woman worst, aim at her 
affections. 

Lew Wallace. 



Woman always did, from the first, make a 
muss in a garden. 

Charles Dudley Warner. 

m 

The bountiful blind woman (Fortune) doth 
make mistake in her gifts to women. For those 
that she makes fair, she scarce makes honest; 
and those that she makes honest, she makes 
very ill-favouredly. 

Shakespeare. 

172 



WOMAN AND HER WITS 

O most delicate fiend! 
Who is't can read a woman? 

Shakespeare. 

There will always remain something to be said 
of woman, as long as there is one on the earth. 

Boufflers. 



THE END. 



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